1971 1 of 5
DIARY 1672
FRIDAY, JANUARY 1. John crawls out of bed about 9, and I follow him out. Get to the windows, which are highly frozen, to find that it's been snowing through the night, and the weather forecasts of a snow emergency seemed to have been fulfilled, and when Bob gets out of bed about 9:30, we start listening to the radio and find that there IS a snow emergency, all the cars parked on snow routes will be towed if not moved, and John decides that 57th Street is a snow route, and that he'll have to take the car into Brooklyn Heights immediately, so that he'll be able to get into the garage before he's snowed out. I'd been washing the dishes in preparation to making breakfast, and then John goes down to shovel out the car from where the street cleaners have immured it, and Art and Bob and I share the bathroom to get everything cleaned up as much as possible, and John's back up to get his stuff and I pack everything for breakfast into the shopping bag from Macy's and we're off to Brooklyn! Stop by at their place so they can pick up overshoes to feel comfortable in the snow when they come back, and drive across the bridge to find the Heights beautiful under its whiteness, and they remain in the back seat for ballast as John plows easily through the five inches of snow on the unbroken ground. Into his place for scrambled eggs, sausages, rolls, and bacon and coffee by about noon, and then he wants to go to the post office to mail off the check for $3500 he got yesterday from the Ford Foundation, and we walk around in the blustery Heights, getting thoroughly cold on the howling Promenade, from where Manhattan is completely invisible, and back to John's, where John wants to take a nap, Bob wants to read, and Art and I play cards, first beating him at "Oh, Hell" so thoroughly that he doesn't want to finish the game, then at Double Solitaire, where he doesn't win a single hand, and then at Gin, where he wins maybe one hand, but that's it. Then we smoke and lie around, and I end up doing Art, though I remain quite soft, and John doesn't want to join and Bob lies quietly aside. Then subway to St. Marks (see following pages) and buy sandwiches and to Art's for salad and more smoke and bed at 12.
DIARY 1676
SATURDAY, JANUARY 2. Wake at 8:30, cuddle, do each other nicely, up at 9:30. Art sleeps while Bob serves up something akin to Crunchy Granola and a soft boiled egg on toast, while John only has orange juice, and we say goodbye to Art through the bedroom door and take off about 10:30 for my place, where the mail is almost nonexistent, and John settles down to do some work at Dutton's, walking me to the corner of 3rd and 14th, and I get the subway home and decide that I'll go to work on the census today, starting at 11 to telephone the hotel, who still won't give me the list of people, and Kahn-Jacoby, which turns out to be two names, but the Jacoby number won't answer either. And I make out a new worksheet of addresses and take off about noon uptown. The people are sleeping in the first place I get to at 12:30, but others are very friendly, getting the first Chinese and first Negro family, and work well until just after 4, when I run out of CES-3's, having thought about that possibility in the morning, but deciding that since the most I ever did was 13, I wouldn't need more than the 16 I had with me, but I had to leave the mentally-retarded girl for later, since I was lacking one form. Subway home at 4:30, and John's not even in yet, so I start on the paperwork and he comes in then, and we sit and talk for a bit, and then at 6 he has his hamburger and I have sloppy joes, and we sit around deciding what to do for the evening. I look through the Times and come up with Bayanihan, and he seems interested, and I call to find they do have tickets, so he naps for half an hour while I read a bit and finish the paperwork, and we're off for the Alice Tully Hall at 7:45. Tickets are fairly good, 17th row center, and the audience heavily Philippine and quite interesting, and during the single intermission we meet Deborah Jowett and Murray Ralph, and we talk about our trip and about the performance, and we look through the program I bought (treating John to the evening as 1/3 of his Christmas present---only an electric mixer and Stonehenge to go---and then there's his BIRTHDAY), and we're back home at 11, picking up the Times and reading it until 12:30, when we both go to bed.
DIARY 1677
SUNDAY, JANUARY 3. Up, John working a bit, I reading the Times until noon, and then we both have lunch: he his hamburger, I the rest of the sloppy joes, and then we're out walking in Central Park, keeping to the streets to avoid the snow which is getting mushy, to get to the Metropolitan to find an enormous crowd there, particularly waiting to get into the "Before Cortez" exhibit. Wait in line about ten minutes to give our dimes for the admittance buttons, then wait about fifteen minutes to get into the exhibit, which is very dimly lit in tiny windows covered with plastic, which makes it hard to see, particularly with all the people, though there's that irresistible impulse, acceded to, to touch where it's possible to touch. The range and variation in the things are sublime, and I want to get a book, but they're sold out of the paperbacks, so I have to mail-order it, and then we're so tired by 4 that we simply leave the museum, seeing hundreds of people standing on line at the doorway AND at the downstairs desks, just waiting for the last day to see the exhibit, and toward the end it should be entirely impossibly to see it. Walk back through the park, walking across the drained lakes, try to see if Joe is home, but he isn't, after not succeeding in getting eggnog as a house gift, and then John stops in to buy some things, and we're back here. Eat dinner about 6, he having all his hamburger before I can fry my pork chops, and I'm feeling tired and irritable for no good reason, except that he insists I should exercise, and I agree, and about 7 I say I really don't feel like doing anything, and he says he feels like going to the Sauna, so he does, and I type the whole 9 pages of the 1970 datebook in about 3 hours, feeling very headachy and my shoulders and back are sore, but I'm determined to finish, and just get to the last page when he gets back at 10:15, saying there were 50 people there, of which 5 were attractive, and he had all of them, coming once. I haven't shaved or showered, but I'm so tired that I only wash my face and brush my teeth and crawl into bed at 10:30. John feels like cuddling with his beer, and sits up late, but he SAYS nothing's wrong. Asleep immediately.
DIARY 1678
MONDAY, JANUARY 4. Up tired, but impatient, John leaves and I start gluing the handle back on the blender and the chair back into the socket, and then Josie calls and says the fellow's about to install the buzzer system in my apartment, and it surprises me by being just a tiny wall unit which they buzz through the wall above the door to connect, and then there's a master conduit down through the building, and that's all there is to it: later I hear that the switchboard is supposed to come out the first of February! Get down to typing while they're here and do 11 pages by the time I'm up to date, and then get down to the puzzle in the Times, which is a difficult one, so I'm working on it from 1-3. The weather is lousy with rain out, so I decide not to go to work. Decide I also have to get used to wearing contacts again, so I wear them for four hours on an accelerated learning schedule which I'll increase by an hour a day until I'm used to them again. I'm thinking I'll have to soon get re-examined for regular glasses, and it would be nice to get SO used to contacts that I won't HAVE to wear glasses, but that seems remote. Get out to buy groceries and wash dishes and do other small things around the apartment to get it back to normal. Then decide to cross off a long-standing item from the list and see what sections of "Acid House" I can boil down to a single page and type single-spaced for Elaine, and I do the first two pages in the evening and write her a letter and send it all out to her, and there are only THREE items left on my list, which is great. Also, twice today I did my exercises, level 1 before breakfast, about noon, and level 2 before lunch, about 4, and then I had dinner about 8:30 and took the subway to John's, reading "India" on the subway, and such material is perfect for the ride there and back. Have some cake and the last of the punch at his place, and we sit around talking for a bit, and then get into bed, where we talk for awhile about the trip and various things that happened through the day, and curl up to sleep together. He whispers "I love you" into my ear for the first time in ages, and I smile and doze off.
DIARY 1679
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5. Try doing him, but he doesn't feel like coming, so he pulls me off. At 8:50 I get to Arnie's to get more forms and some blank "Special Places" forms, and he also gives me the full moon schedule and some festival dates from Saturday Review, and I leave at 9:30, arranging to meet him at 2:15 after lunch with Norma. I'd phoned for a haircut appointment yesterday, to get something ELSE off my list, and they said to call back at noon and I exercise and eat breakfast and watch "Concentration" and do the paperwork on things to give Arnie and make the phone call and decide Norma and I'll eat at Thursday's-24, and get there just after 12:30, and we walk down to a good sole amandine for me and an onion omelet with eggplant for her, and I have a $1.25 piece of cheesecake for dessert, and the whole bill comes to $8, which isn't good and isn't bad, and she's delighted with the place. Back up to her office, where I left my briefcase, to talk for a bit more about her and Arnie and me and John, and about Grant's great new 4-room, 2-bath semi-professional apartment on W. 74th for $230, and I'm down to wait for Arnie at 2:30, and he stops in and conquers the Westbourne Hotel, which I'll pick up on Friday, though it takes him about an hour, and we try a couple of other special places, and he lets me out at the Hudson Hotel, which smells like Calcutta and has as many flies in the office as in a hayfield, and I get the names from a tongue-tied lady who can't pronounce anything right. Then do a couple of individual interviews and decide I have enough by 9, and get back home to find John working here at 9:15, and he's watching the report on "First Tuesday" on the Church of Jesus Christ, and that goes on until 10:15, quite interesting, and I tell him to stop knocking their evident sincerity, and then I exercise and put on a steak to broil, and eat, finishing at 11, when the program's over, and he's in bed, which rather disturbs me, but I crawl in beside him as he drinks and we talk for a bit, so I'm not exactly falling asleep on a completely full stomach. Have trouble with the sheets and blankets during the night, and we keep pulling everything apart, so it's not as heavy as his.
DIARY 1680
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6. Again he doesn't feel like doing anything, so he's out of bed quickly and gone by 8:30. I exercise, feeling rather stiff from even little level 3, and I still can't do it in under the 11 minutes, and then put in contacts for a five-hour stint today, which wasn't possible since I was working yesterday. Get rid of the Christmas cards and see who I have to write back to, and then watch "Specter of the Rose," with the awfully stupid, but beautifully-bodied Michael Checkov, and when I was doing the paperwork this morning I found I'd lost my ID card, so I called Arnie and he called back to say that he was coming past at 2:30, so I said he could take me up to the field, and I even willingly bypassed the end of "Specter" so that he could do that. We got into the car and talked about the work I'd done, and then he dropped me off at 142nd at Maxwell's at 3:10, and the woman said she'd take the list and fill it out for me. Get around to a couple of other places and interview Bernard Jacoby, who's the one to talk about from today (as Rabbi London was the one to talk about yesterday, after the incredible hassle with 512 W. 140th, which had no one living there, and finally I went into the basement and knocked on the door, and the mumbling Mr. Harper told me to go to 630, and I went to 526 W. 142, and woman pointed to place on corner, which looked locked, so I went back to house, when a boy told me to go in the side door, which I did, into the kitchen, then into the library, then up the stairs to the Rabbi, who talked to me for about an hour about the Depression, Nixon, skilled labor moving around the country after work, the sewage plant, 10 15-watt light bulbs, and their needed high school math teacher. So the Depression is caused by the US going from a war to a peace economy, is it?), having earned $20,000 a year during the 20's, lived here on West End for 28 years, was an "Officer with license" (which I took to mean spy), traveled much in the Far East on business, took me for 22 years old, and recommended "always take the bus tours, that's my most important advice." Home at 5:30 and call John, watch "The Great American Dream Machine," "Tempest" and "Omega" from 8:30-10:30, and went to John's getting there at 11:15, and RIGHT into bed with only one kiss.
DIARY 1682
THURSDAY, JANUARY 7. Wake at 7:15, cuddle, OUT of bed with only one kiss. Home and fuss around fixing up the apartment, watch "Concentration," and then decide to get another item off the list by not GOING to the tourist offices, which are quite widely scattered from 6th to 1st Avenues, from 33rd to 68th Streets, and decide to telephone them all, and they all obligingly give me the information through the mail. I leave myself only four places to go to myself, and even then when I call for the hours, I find that Ceylon doesn't have a tourist office anymore, so they have to send by mail. With general laziness, I type four pages and I don't finish lunch until 3, and then get out for the Japanese tourist office, who has all their folders right in plain view, and I take a poster, too. Then see Philippines Airlines across the way, and get lots of information from her, except that it lasts until 4:30, and I'm worried about making the other places. Dash across the street to Hawaii, and they don't have a supply of the best brochures, but she says she'll send them to me, and mostly what they have is tour and hotel and airlines information, though she doesn't know anything about inter-island touring with a round-the-world ticket. Out at 5 and get to India to find them setting up for a party, and they give me a whole bunch of stuff. Bookmasters didn't have the Universe Calendar, and I check with Azuma for a shade, but they're all $4.95 for the goodly sized ones, and I think that's a bit expensive, but when I get up to Takahashi on 57th, I find they're closed. Get home just before 6, when Morrison was supposed to come up for the bed, and John's here, getting ready to eat, and he annoys me by saying "Well, let him pick up the bed later," and I shout back "I'm only getting RID of it so quick because YOU were annoyed with it on the floor," and Morrison comes at 6:30 and we help him down with it, and he's built a new wall in 1008, and he's putting the bed in the middle of the air space of the room, and he gives me a phallic sketch and John a number of tiny fishes, which he gives me. Eat quickly and cab to Asia House at 7:30, quick nice dance and marimba concert, out at 8:45, walk home, bed at 11.
DIARY 1683
FRIDAY, JANUARY 8. Up and do John rather nicely, he's to work and I get a call from Stonehenge, and somehow the morning goes and I get out to work at 1, taking a bus up to 105th, but they haven't left the form for me, and I'm down to 99th, where I'm told to see him in another hotel Weistuch owns, and he says he won't mail it, and that he actually will fill it out, which relieves me. Then catch another bus up to 125th Street, and try the places around there, and finish in good time, trying all the places along 135th also, then walk up to 142nd to get the list from Maxwell, which they're good enough to have typed, and then telephone Mrs. Aken at the Westbourne to find that the form IS there, so I catch another bus down to pick THAT up, and by the time I get the last bus home (taking time out to stop in at another Chinese shop and PICK up a round shade for the lamp, which turns out to fit BEAUTIFULLY), it's 5 pm, and there are really very few places I have left to interview, but Arnie says that Chu's being pressured by his boss to finish everything that's out before they give out any new work, though that will make it difficult for the workers, but since they're not workers, they don't give a single care. Phone John to tell him about the Stonehenge arrangements, and he says he'll pick me up downstairs at 7:30. Shower and shave and dress up in my blue bells and tweed sport jacket and new Christmas tie from Grandma and my cashmere overcoat, my hair looking great after just showering---real hyacinthine locks---and I get down just as John is about to look at the map, wearing an open-necked shirt and sweater. Traffic is awful going up the Deegan, and we're only there at 8:50, and we stand around the parlor looking at his scrolls and citations, seemingly a great restaurant, and seated in the neon-lit room overlooking the lake, and he has cold brains, tasty, and I have fabulous homemade sausage with mustard and wine sauce, and my vegetable and barley soup is good, as is his startling apple/vichyssoise, and I have excellent venison cutlets and he has pheasant, all great, and venison and puréed chestnuts are fabulous together. Desserts of black forest cake and white snow cake aren't so successful, wine awful, bill $39 with tip and fuss. Home at 12:30.
DIARY 1684
SATURDAY, JANUARY 9. Up and John's immediately out to the office, and I mope around the apartment until 11, and then start paperwork on a new schedule of places to go, and get out at 11:30, getting up to the projects at 11:45, and interviewing one family in the rather nice projects, and then walk up Broadway early for the 1 pm appointment, but I'm eager to see the last "Orpheus and Eurydice" at the Met this afternoon. It's a six-person family with five people for CES-3's, so I talk quickly to the charming guy from Dominican Republic with the strange scar between his eyes, as if his glasses broke around his eyes when he was very young, and get out at 1:30, subway downtown to pass up a $17.50 fifth row orchestra ticket, even for $10, except that he sells it later to someone for the full price, and take a second-row balcony seat for $7.75 from a pretty little girl, and get inside in time to read the program and settle down for the performance, and the Milko Sparemblek choreography isn't that bad for the first act, but the filmy gold fringed costumes for the Elysian Fields scene, coupled with the epicene makeup on the fragile fellows, is too much below camp to even laugh at, and when they all back off in amazement for the entrance of Grace Bumbry's Orpheus, I can just HEAR them saying "How'd that black women, in DRAG yet, get in HERE?" It was that kind of funny. Home at 5 to find John in, and he naps when I do some work between 6 and 7, and then we eat and bus up to the Loews 83rd for the double feature of "Catch-22" (rather good, and I certainly didn't know that the main theme was death and "it doesn't matter" whatever surrounds it, and though there was plenty of cunt and blood, there was no cock), and "Little Fauss and Big Halsy," and certainly Robert Redford is the echt-Colt man with his hipless crotch, slumpy humpy bulky chest and shoulders, and lovely cool look about his face. Again there was cunt (and the lovely line "once (going to bed with someone of the same sex) is cool, but twice is QUEER"), but no cock, and I'll certainly be looking forward to the first sight of Redford's privates, in general. John plays around the balcony with three or four, and we're home to a warm bed on a cold night.
DIARY 1685
SUNDAY, JANUARY 10. Wake at 8:30, which is rather late, and we both try to use the bathroom, but I'm still not quite ready when Sergio and Kenneth get here precisely at 9 am. Talk for about ten minutes in the apartment, and then we're out to the car, talking about Kenneth's experiences in Merce's repertory classes (and he can't teach, except to make himself sound just "like Martha") as we go up the Saw Mill, and we get off at Golden's Bridge and trundle through the countryside (happy that Bob decided to cancel the idea of following us through the hills, since he wanted to take John and me for a drive only AFTER John made the arrangements with Sergio), and out onto the thick ice of a reservoir until a mountie (on a station wagon) chases us off the ice, saying that rowboats not pulled up enough can be crushed by the expanding, freezing ice, and that cars can drive onto the lake. Up further toward Sodom and Peachfuzz Lake, or something like that, and we see an ice boat under sail, and skate along the ripply ice, looking at the frozen breaker under a bridge where two expansions overlapped, and the quiet is shattered by a motorcyclist (hopefully with studs) who roared into the silence of all the corners of the lake, and we left to look at the cemetery across the street. Getting hungry around noon, and we set off west toward the Hudson, and pass up the German place as being too much of a meal, and stop in a place just across from Bear Mountain for hot beef sandwiches, though the pie for dessert was lousy, with good beef, fresh carrots and great French fries, and then I drive for a bit, up to look out over the Hudson, get caught in the skiing traffic at Bear Mountain, down to the bird sanctuary, and then down to the Palisades, looking over the State Line Lookout, and everyone's cold, so we're down to their place at 4:30, where Sergio plays two of his compositions, the last rather good, and we change and drive to Peter Cott's and Kenneth Needham's, and the group is quite impossible, though I talk about travel with John Corigliano, and sex with Matthew Matiello, and fucking with an unpleasant fellow, and we leave about 10, driving him home, and to John's, where we get to bed quite early.
DIARY 1686
MONDAY, JANUARY 11. Leave without anyone doing anything, and I'm getting rather horny, though still happy with the conversation I had with John when we both felt there was something wrong with my going there last Wednesday, since I just thought he WANTED me there, and he really didn't, and we decide that it MIGHT be possible that we don't sleep together EVERY night. Home to do the NY Times puzzle and get a call from Dick Hsieh, and we talk for a long time about his going back to work for his brother and he says he'll call Herman and arrange for a lunch sometime in the following three weeks, and then Bob Rosinek calls about seeing a show, and I certainly don't agree with his suggestion of "Trash," but he says "Gimme Shelter," and I say fine. No---John and I did each other this morning very slowly and nicely with Baby Magic, since I'm rather sore from it, and still slick and smelly from it---and Bob comes over at 1:40, and the show is ON at 1:40, and the next at 3:15, so we decide to listen to music while he talks about his decision about whether to accept a partnership in an embroidery company which would take about the rest of his life to build into a great lucrative business, or whether he should continue to struggle. Then I ask if he wants to smoke, and he does, so we have a pipe, and the music is the Moodies, and we begin caressing each other's hands, and then we go to the arms, and he pulls my head down onto his lap, and as the music goes further and we get higher, he bends down to kiss me, and then I suggest we lay on the floor in the sun, and get the blanket out, and when he starts rubbing my soreness from the morning, I suggest we use baby oil, and he loves it, getting very hard and staying on the verge of coming for a bit, then shooting all over as he groans, "Pull that cock, hard, Baby." Wash and dress and it's 3:15, so we sit around talking until 5, and he leaves, and John comes over at 7:45, we get down to eating, and I'm doing the laundry, but the woman ahead of me doesn't call me like she should, so I'm out of the dryer late, not wanting to bother John, who's working nude, so I take it out at 9:15 and then get down to Backster (see next page) at 9:30. Back at 11:10, talk and bed at 12.
DIARY 1688
TUESDAY, JANUARY 12. Cuddle with John, but that's all, and I do the paperwork on the last of the forms I have, hoping to have enough to get me through the first part of this week from LAST week, and Arnie has to get new work to me anyway, since I'm down to five places in all, most of them "No responses." John works until about noon, and I bother him by talking with Walter Joseph for a long time when he calls from a bank, waiting for his lunch partner, and I get to the dishes and eat lunch and start looking at some of the letters that I really should answer, and then I have to get the laundry out, and go to the store to cash another check to get needed money before my check comes in, and bring up the mail, which has some more of the travel information, this time about Indonesia, and some more sex stuff, and when he leaves I just feel like having sex, so I line up the mirror in the sun and get out the pornography and come with great feelings of exhaustion and completion, and then determine to do the exercises, which I'd fallen off for a bit, and by that time it's time for dinner, and I've called for the final appointment at John De Coney's for a haircut free from some apprentice, and they say come at 6:45, so I stop by Bookmasters and pick up the Reich and DeBold books recommended by Backster to have something to read, and I need it, since they don't come down for me until 8:25, and I've been entertained by a large-cocked fellow in green satin trousers and an enormous velvet greatcoat who also plays the guitar, various cutters wandering in and out in shirtsleeves, groovy customers, and Robert introduces himself to me, Simon impressed me with his help, then John flames over in his yellow shirt to lend a hand and a critique, then Austin brings up the rear, but the $10, $13 (for Simon and Paul) and $17 prices (for John himself) are just too steep, so I give the guy a buck, then walk back home to watch "Secret Ceremony" from 9-11, interspersed with "Cosmos" by Belson, and he's really rather a bore, "Dance Film One" by a non-sexy Peter Hoving, and "Still Life" and "Hello" by the amateurish Ray Rice, calling John to say I'm NOT coming over, and celebrate by watching "League of Gentlemen" to 1:30.
DIARY 1689
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13. Up wearily at 10, having come again out of anomie, and get out of bed feeling like doing nothing, so I pick up "Listen, Little Man," which I started last night, and finish that between watching "Concentration" (and it seems that I'm getting the rebies [if that's the plural of rebus] even sooner than the contestants), and then out of sheer inertia start on the "LSD, Man and Society" book until I go to the Museum of Modern Art at 2, thinking that "The Virginian" is being shown today, but find out that there was a printing error in the schedule, and "Les Cousins" is on, which I've seen. Out to wander east (having picked up 2 $1 stamps and 10 10¢ stamps in preparation to mailing out "Acid House" again -- at the Post Office) to search for a Macro Color 1971 calendar, and find one at the east side Bookmasters, after picking up the newest Ray Bradbury at Marlboro's. Nothing like having a lot on the side to read. Walk back about 3 pm to find my mailbox full of stuff: Arnie'd been by, leaving me new work, got my paycheck from work, a letter of acceptance from Tsi-Dun, a huge bunch of stuff from Singapore, selling Indonesia and Malaysia, a letter from the Landas (No, that was Monday), and a book from Rita, which turns out to be "1970 BC," the collected year of BC comic strips, and I read them all through in a couple of hours, keeping track of which ones I like best, and somewhere in there I have lunch about 4:30, and again think I should start on letters, but don't really get around to them before John comes in to go right in to work, and I watch another chapter of "The Great American Dream Machine," the clowns at the start getting funnier, along with the foods guy, but the Studs Terkel and the other commentaries getting even more boring. Also called two more sets of tourist information in, today. We re-watch the Flick-Out from last night, and "Cosmos" is even more of a bore, and then when John goes in for a shower I watch the end of "Night Gallery," where Rod Serling has ANOTHER doll (of the killed man) threatening the Indian killer---not content to leave Algernon Blackwood's "The Doll" as it was in the book. We get into bed at 11, talking a bit about the day, and John falls asleep INSTANTLY.
DIARY 1690
THURSDAY, JANUARY 14. Up and cuddle VERY nicely, doing him most agreeably. He leaves at 8:30, and then I watch "Lost Horizon" from 9-11, after exercising (still on the third level after four times now, though I'm only 20 seconds off being at 11 minutes), and while catching the rebus on "Concentration," but the movie's quite good, leaving the inevitable feeling that the "Shangri-La" that he found at the end was DEATH, itself, and nothing more or less---though death, qua death, can NEITHER be more nor less. Arnie comes over at 11:30 to talk about my work and the payroll information, and Greg Warner comes over, tight crotch and all, pushing out in front of his pelvis and in back of his thighs and at the sides of his knees when he sits down, and all along his chest when he stretches in his chair, and he's really quite devastating for only 18, and Arnie tells me that his older brother at 23 is a real knockout. They leave at 1 and I rush as fast as possible through lunch to get to the bank at 1:40 to cash my check and get some money in my pocket, leaving $50 in the savings account, and down to the Museum for an empty theater for "The Virginian," a good print of a bad 1913 movie by Cecil B. DeMille with a real stupid, klutzy, heartless goof-off in the title role. Leave at 3 and hurry home to page through my pornography and come with straining agony once, and then stagger into the living room in my bathrobe and when I come back to put it away, it so takes me over that I come again, sore and groaning and wasted in feeling, and then I get down to catch up on my diary by typing 8 pages, doing the final page just as John comes in at 10:45, and finish "LSD, Man and Society," and it took me so long because I was watching an exemplary production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" with the superb cast of Margaret Leighton as Mrs. Cheeverly, Jeremy Brett as Lord Goring, and Keith Michel as the extremely handsome, though far from ideal, Lord Chilton, though his wife wasn't very good. The costumes and settings were unquestionably authentic, and the dialogue just what you'd expect from highest quality Wilde. Sit around talking about John's sensitivity to space, both in dancing and in apartments, and we go to bed at 11:30, peeved at each other.
DIARY 1692
FRIDAY, JANUARY 15. John, sadly, decides I MUST come, and I strain, and he later asks me why it was so difficult for me, and I could only reply that I really didn't feel like it at first, but I didn't say anything. "But you hadn't come for a number of days, had you?" he asked. "No," I said, and that was the end of the conversation, though I felt bad about lying. He left and I exercised, and then decided to go to the bank to get more money into the checking account so I could write a check for Jean-Jacques to Le Van Kim, and went down to buy tickets for tonight to "Les Ballets Africains," and stopped off at Smith's to get a card and find that an eye exam is only $5, except that I have to steer clear of contacts for one week, at least. Up to watch "Concentration," and sit and watch "Sale of the Century" afterward, and Howard rings at 11:30 for the faucet, which I'd told him about downstairs, and he talks to noon about how great the building used to be when he came here 22 years ago. Retype the first few pages of "Acid House" to make them neat and clean, and send the whole thing out to Grove Press, hoping they won't be as traditional as Scott Meredith. Then type two pages of diary, and go down to mail the stuff out to Grove, the Horizon contest, a note to Don O'Shea that I got his letter, and the check to Kim, and meet Harry, who's leaving something with me for Arnie, and to pick up the brochures from Nepal, which had 12¢ due on them which Josie paid for, and meanwhile, until 3, I did all the things I described on the preceding pages THE TYRANNY OF THE LIST. Have lunch late and read Scientific American and John's in at 5:45, after Avi calls about Monopoly Wednesday, and we eat here and leave at 7:10 to get down to the Brooks Atkinson for a jammed audience and an extremely lively and well-muscled and athletically danced, by both men and women, all of whom had exceptional pectorals, and the Initiation scene in the jungle, with the ominous stilt-walkers, the anomalous figures in grasses and reeds and masks, the terror in the acting of the raper and the rapee, all combine to provide a grimly sadistic, chillingly gripping sensational stage event. To John's at 10:30, to fabulous sex with Baby Magic, John coming 1/2 and 1 times, bed at 11:30.
DIARY 1693
SATURDAY, JANUARY 16. Up at 8, read a bit of AEC from the Center Magazine, then John is ready to drive into town to work, leaving me off at the subway station about 9:30, and I'm home to pick up my briefcase and get into the field around 81st Street for the first time, getting Louis-Dreyfus and a couple of other people somewhat more affluent than the Dominican Republicans I'd gotten earlier. Hassle with the doormen and have to come back Monday for many of them, but get a lot done, thanks to lots of help from very nice people, and though it's freezing cold, the apartments are warm enough that I don't even feel uncomfortable when I go out. But I'm to the bottom of the list at 3:15, and get home to find John here already, surprised to find me back so late, and then after we talk a bit, I settle down to do the paperwork and end up working from 4:30-6 while he naps, and that makes 8 hours for today, which is pretty good and quite interesting. Try to phone Ava-Graph, but no one's answering, so we're down to the Coq au Vin for dinner, and he likes his brains and my sole is OK but greasy, and the whole thing comes to about $8, which isn't bad, and John doesn't rave, but he doesn't complain either. Back up and Ava-Graph answers, saying there won't be any necessity for reservations. We drove there in the freezing air, and we were the first ones in, looking at an old reproduction of an old print of an old photo of Valentino with small cock bunched up against the front of skimpy shorts, but nice chest and legs, and the campy posters, and Avery Willard, the filmmaker/projectionist/phone answerer/host, told us he was remaking some leather film with the fellow with the rings in his cock and nipples, and others finally came in, and about 9:25 we saw "Reflections," which was so poorly modeled I started watching the Times Square reflections in rain and water in the background, "The Gypsy's Ball" revealed a cutely-muscled and smiling Wayne Clark, and a campy Mario Montez and a horrid transvestite Bill Wood, "Fountains" had a few nice models, and Rand Brooks, who jerked off his big cock in "Clouds" was there, and there might have been sex, but John and I went off to the Eagle (see following pages).
DIARY 1696
SUNDAY, JANUARY 17. Up late at 10, having nice sex, thinking about last night, and I start getting into the Times, but John wants to look at the trip schedule again, so we get all the brochures out and look at those, and then about noon we're back to reading the Times and him to working, and then at 1:30 he leaves for a gamelan recital at Asia House and I get down to MMA to see "Cimarron," one of the first of the Academy Award winners for quite a number of years, and it's a bit too long, and get back at 4 to find John back already, and we talk some about the performances, and we're back to our tasks, John sleeping on the sofa while I start on the puzzle and read a couple of articles from the Magazine section until 7, and then we're dressed and down to the Eagle to eat, see preceding pages, and then he's off by himself and I sit around, doing nothing for the first time since I went there, and we leave about 10. Get to his place and he suggests we smoke, but then the phone rings with a few people, and I finish the AEC article, and by the time he's off the phone, he says he doesn't want to smoke anymore, which is just as well, since I really felt a bit too tired to smoke. Just don't feel like getting up in the mornings, and for some reason, we just don't seem to be kissing in bed like we used to: there's still nice exchanges when we say hello or goodbye, or sometimes just in the middle of making dinner or working, but the extended sieges of mouth to mouth (and other things) contact that we had at the beginning seems to have left the bed, and consequently, I feel (as he did before), that the bed is getting too much simple-sex oriented, and there's not really too much FEELING exchanged. Sure, some few times a week I see fit to really build up the feeling of voluptuousness in him, and it feels good when I do it, but it seems to me that he's content to let me do the work, get HIM all excited, and he doesn't even seen to want to RESPOND. We've been going along well enough, with enough endearments during waking hours to suffice, but I sure do miss those prolonged kissing sessions---and I suspect it's something to do with his hyper-sensitivity about both sets of teeth being clean.
DIARY 1697
MONDAY, JANUARY 18. I'm home to start finding the tape for my session this evening with Taylor, and then about 11 Arnie calls to say that Chu wants to interview me for a possible Crew Leader's job, and he wants to see me at 1. So I fix myself up and get there just on the dot of 1, and no one's there, and Chu comes in a few minutes later and asks the simplest questions: what would I do if someone wasn't doing their work and deserved firing (talk to them to see what was wrong), could I teach (I have, but never verbatim), and could I fire someone (and I did, twice), and then it looks like I might be teaching the rest of this week and all of next, but I make excuses about appointments with doormen and supers all up and down CPW, and Arnie calls Harry and HE'S willing to do it, to our surprise. Greg comes in, looking not so handsome today, a bit pale and pimply, though the body is still right on, and then Arnie says he's staying to work longer, so I subway up, getting home at 2:30, and watch the African Ballets of Ghana and Mali on TV at 3-4, after having called Taylor and putting it BACK to 4 when Arnie told me about the program on Channel 13. Lug the recorder to her place at 4:10, and she's the tiniest, hunchbacked little old lady with bright eyes behind stylish glass frames and a Pucci-pattern dress, from which she constantly dredges up the hearing aid to put on the phone. There's some sort of interference between my machine and hers, and both squeal, but she starts talking about 4:30 and doesn't stop until after 6:30, calling someone she says will have influence in my life and maybe for my writing, and I'm impressed with the nice things she says and the expertise with which she says them (see notes on pages 2059-2069), and I even decide to buy the book from her, but she doesn't have change for $20 so she writes me a check for $2. Home before John and watch part of Laugh-In while washing dishes and part of an awful televised Marathon which is just as stupid as the actual ones are, with the pseudo-psychiatrists trying to analyze everyone ELSE, the games, the holding back of anger, the toleration of real TIME-WASTERS. Eat late and bed early, John drinking, natch.
DIARY 1698
TUESDAY, JANUARY 19. We're both up fairly early to work on the trip plans again, and I type up a list of places we definitely want to see in India, and we agree we'll meet at John's on 57th so we can go to the Indian Tourist office this afternoon. I'm out for groceries and miscellaneous, and the mail, this time from Burma, and John Kim called last night and said he might be over this noon, so I didn't go out as I'd planned to, but he didn't call to say he was coming over, either, and so John left at 12:30. I settled down to do a few pieces of mail, trying to get everything together, and am eating lunch when John calls at 2:15 to say he's finished early, and we can go to India early. I suggest we shop for Paul's "Golden Guide to South and East Asia," but John's strangely impatient (and has lice under his arms, we found this morning), and I shop Doubleday myself, and he goes the wrong way on 49th, but finally we're together with Mr. Verma, and he takes us all the way through the country, suggesting more places to see, pooh-poohing some of the bird and animal sanctuaries that we've added to the list, and adding Udaipur and Jaipur and saying of course we have to go into Delhi. We're flying a lot more than I thought, and also taking a lot of trains, and then after about an hour, it turns out we should turn the whole trip around, going to Kashmir first instead of last, and so he painstakingly writes out a final list of places in their order, and we leave just before 5 to subway to John's. I sit in his place and come up with a NEW schedule, and then dash off at 6 to Alan Oken's. He's surprisingly young, quickly established that I'm gay, though coolly so, and is far too pedantic, new at the game (and not so encouraging---maybe experience for these people is LEARNING to say what we want to HEAR), and quite abrupt with some of his quips, and I'm out at 7:30, $35 poorer, though subsequent readings are only $20, and some people have them MONTHLY. Back to John's in the freezing winds to jot down what I remember from his talk (see following pages), then jump into a hot tub to soak out my coldness, sip some of JOHN'S whiskey-y sours, and we're into bed about 10:30, chatting about what Oken told me and the trip.
DIARY 1702
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20. We both didn't sleep because of the banging radiator in John's building, and we got up grumpy and rankled and nervous. I decided to go directly up to get the room format of the Yale and Broadmoor and the list from the Marion Studios, and the guy seemed very disappointed that I didn't CALL to cancel my appointment with him yesterday at 10 that I "cancelled" in favor of a combination of "Concentration" and John Kim. Work to 10:30 finishing up the Special Places and get home, then do some paperwork from 11-12, and a new River comes which sadly doesn't have ANYTHING of mine new which I really wanted to get in. So sad. It seems I might be getting soon "out" of the River. Eat and fix up the apartment a bit and Grove Press returns "Acid House" with a form note, and I decide to take my briefcase to MMA at 2, buying envelopes and going to the Post Office to find that the manuscript only takes 98¢ postage, and mail it out to Bernard Geis Associates, hoping their hunger for sex and their penchant for advertising might send me the "good news in mid-February" that Oken said I could expect. Get to "Moran of the Lady Letty" and laugh with everyone else when Valentino says "You're not like any girl I've met: you dress like a man, you swear like a man, you're stronger than I am, I'm fascinated by you." And she replies "I don't like men---nor women---no, nor women either." Meet Arnie and talk about business for a bit, and I subway up to CPW and see a few managers of buildings and talk with the Schwamm maid in the kitchen of the duplex and with the Greenaugh maid, who's "Miss Sill's hairdresser" on the phone, and get home to work on the paperwork and phone, even after John comes over at 7:45, until about 8. Shave and shower and eat quickly, and thankfully Avi and Roger Newman don't get here until 9, when I'm finally ready, and Roger is fairly cute, very blond, very bulky of chest and torn of jeans, to John's delight, and the photos that Avi brings are horrid of me and good of John, and we play Monopoly for $1 each, through I put up John's $1, and John retires at 11:15, Avi at 11:45, and the game's over at 12:45, he refusing $2, saying he'll call tomorrow.
DIARY 1703
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21. Up and neck a bit and we both come with vibrator. John leaves and I start back trying to get everything finished, even to washing socks, and I phone a candygram to Grandma, one day late for her birthday, and do the paperwork on the Colliers that I called last night, and Arnie drops off some more stuff, and I interpolate that with what I HAVE in the 40's, and then call Hyman and get HER, and by that time it's time for "Concentration" and I finish the socks and the paperwork again, and figure up how many hours I work, and by that time it's lunch and out to the MMA for "SOS Iceberg," with lousy acting but great bits with icebergs and ice floes. Chu calls trying to find Arnie, and he says he can't hire a crew leader until his crew is trained, which I guess is Friday afternoon. Call Arnie to tell him what the film is like, then stop to pick up the laundry and price Clearasil Soap and Baby Magic and Pears and Lactopine, but no one has the latter. Home to determine to catch up with diary, and actually do 10 pages, and then get to the letters and write to Claudia and Jean-Jacques and Helen and Krishnamurti for tickets for April, and write my praise of "Omega" and "Tempest" to Flickout, and then call the Heligman's apartment at 9, and he says I should call back at 10, so I have dinner and write to Mom in the meantime, and get HIS interview on the phone until 10:15, and call John to say I'll be a bit late getting there. There's a long wait for the subway, and then at 4th Street there are three or four adolescents, joined by two dim-witted blacks who sit across from me and stare, and a thin fellow who keeps eating candy bars guiding a black-haired older guy who's obviously retarded, and there are older boxer-types who seem not to belong to the group, and a couple of college types with shortish, cappish black hair and nifty glasses, and all wear bells, but they seem to share a rather gap-mouthed silence punctuated by inane conversation. The keeper makes faces at his retarded charge and no one else in the car seems to notice them. To John's at 11, shower and wash my hair, and while it dries I tell John about my day (Marty calls, Roger doesn't).
DIARY 1704
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22. Up and do John with Baby Magic, and I so much want to come after he gets up and goes into the bathroom, that I lie on the bed and play with myself until I decide I have to let him in on it, so I go into the bathroom, saying "Hey, I really do want to come," and start working away on myself over the sink as he holds tightly around my waist and watches. I come very jerkily, since I'm straining very hard to come off in as fast a time as possible, and then we both proceed to wipe little white spots off arms, walls, and John makes as if to wipe off the ceiling, too. He's given me a 4-cup coffee carafe to replace the 2-cup one he gave me before and broke, and a whole packet of stamps which are just great, so great that I get home and soak them all off, putting them on the Village Voice to dry, and I have lunch and get out to the Modern for "Riptide," which, even though it has Norma Shearer and George Marshall, isn't very good, about a "perfect" marriage that's broken up by Robert Montgomery as a drunk, and patched by a sobby ending with the child coming to glue them back together. Back home and the slides are waiting for me, and I look at them (I do this in the morning), and sort them into ordinary, good, and great (packets 3,4,5, and 2, and 1, respectively), and come twice over them, feeling absolutely drained, but they're quite good and I'm relieved that they've finally come. Back to finish putting all the stamps into the album, including the U.S. ones I'd ordered so long ago, mint from Washington, and then John's here about 8 to look at the slides, but neither of us is excited about them, and we eat, then look at the State of the Union message, and we drink wine and begin to smoke, and I'm floating off dreamily and he starts working with my new bottle of Baby Magic, and we both get ourselves very rubbed up and I'm being almost frantically vicious with his balls, but he seems to love it, groaning and tossing about on the sofa, and finally I stand over him on the coffee table and we both jerk off (TV has gone off), and Baby Magic is being flipped all over by flying fingers, and finally we both come with enormous shots and groans, I write notes (next page) and bed at 11.
DIARY 1706
SATURDAY, JANUARY 23. Both up about 9, rather sore, and shower and John and I have fried bread that I make with the Italian bread, and it's rather good, though John scorns the Log Cabin syrup after he reads its ingredients, and settles for the Seavers' jam, even though he can't decide what fruits it's made out of. He leaves about 10:15, later than he'd planned, and I put all my work together and make the list and tackle the area between 54th and 43rd Streets, and 8th and 10th Avenues, between 11 am and 4 pm. Many of the people are home, some don't speak English, some have phones and names that I can get later, others tell me to come back, and I get two nice breaks: the Ecuadorian super who translates the next-door apartment for me, and the Iglesias super who says I should come back Tuesday at 6, and he'll translate for the old lady for me. Back up to the family that had been interviewed BEFORE, and that's the last on my list, and I'm home at 4. John isn't home yet, so I settle down to work on the paperwork, and am rather chagrined to see that I've only done about half of them, and this was after I'd rather planned to do them all. But I have 7 or 8 in all, and that's good enough for almost all of last week. John naps after he gets here, and works a bit, and---no, he goes HOME and naps a bit, and we agree to meet in the last row of the Elgin at 9:30 for the last double feature, and I get there just at 9:30, after eating a late dinner, and find a long line for the first time, but we're all in by 9:30, and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is funny Hitchcock with Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard and the fact that they're not really married, with a rather sexy Gene Raymond, and then "Suspicion" comes on, and I remember my former disappointment that Cary Grant really ISN'T guilty of killing anyone, and he DOES love Joan Fontaine, and then I recall that "El Topo" goes on at 1, and it goes on at 1:20, and we watch the first bloody, sexy, weird, mysterious, colorful 10 minutes and get completely hooked into it, and finally John leaves, almost sick with fatigue at 2:30, and I watch it until 3:20, grabbing a cab home for $1.25 off the meter, and crawl into a toasty-warm bed after washing myself, very tired.
DIARY 1
SUNDAY, JANUARY 24. John left the envelope with the stuff from work in the car when I gave it to him last night, and it contained the envelopes with his birthday present in: a business-size envelope which said "To John, from Bob" very small in the tiny corners, containing a regular envelope, on which was written "There is nothing on the inside of this envelope [and it was true, since I HADN'T written anything on the inside surface of that envelope] this time, but there might be something on the inside of another, another time. Let's just see how good our memories can be." And then inside that was the last note-size envelope, saying "EVERYTHING IS," and inside BOTH loops of the "IS" was printed the word "inside," saying, in effect "Everything is inside, inside," and everything WAS inside the paper box which was inside that envelope, and the outside read "This wrinkled box is for John" in no particular order, and INSIDE the box was the fact that I owed him lunch at La Grenouille, and a punch bowl, and that I loved him. The weather was perfectly awful, so John really decided he wanted to go home and do whatever he had to do there, and I stayed home and read the Times and began working on the puzzle, but it was hard so I couldn't finish. Also watched Bejart on TV on Camera Three, then the sexy Buster Crabbe in "King of the Jungle" from 12 to 1:30, then ate lunch, and watched Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" from St. Peters, interspersed with wrestling finals on Channel 13, and got bored with them both and continued with the puzzles. Then showered and dressed and at 6 went down to 2 Charleton for dinner with Joe and Bob and the bickering Jim and Joe, and John and me. The lentil soup with apples was good, but the roast beef wasn't very tender, and the birthday rum cake from Victor's was very tasty, and we all sat around and talked about sex and bickering and cruising and orgies and Gay Liberation and then Jim and Joe went home and we talked about the troubles of NOT bickering in front of company, and Joe and Bob have only been together for 4 years, and I thought it was more than that. I was getting very tired, left over from last night, and we left at 11:30, getting to John's at 12.
DIARY 1708
MONDAY, JANUARY 25. Up, sexless, and to Arnie's at 9:10, after reading the Voice to pass the time, and get all the business done and get new work and get out at 10 and home at 10:30 in time for "Concentration," and keep working on the puzzle, which depresses me because it's hard and I've gotten many wrong words in, and I'm biting the skin off the edges of my fingers for the first time in ages, and I'm still not finished at noon, when I have to eat in order to get to the Museum of Modern Art for "Devil's Circus," again with a very young Norma Shearer, and this one is even worse, which is difficult, with her falling in love with a house thief, and the lion trainer falls in love with her, and his wife causes her to fall, paralyzing her from the waist down, and then everyone's thrown back together and she walks, tearfully, in the final scene, and there wasn't a wet eye in the audience, the film was so bad. Back to agonize about the puzzle some more, and actually finish it, with some sort of triumph, about 5, and try to get some work done, but John calls and says he's gotten two tickets for the opening of Bejart tonight, but he doesn't want to go, so I try Azak and Joe and John Connolly and Arno and Arnie and then call Avi and try David Khouri and Bob Jesske and Roger Newman, but NONE of them is around, and Cyndy can't go, and Roger's going to Alvin Ailey. So I shower and shave and try calling again, and finally get Arnie, who'll go, and I eat dinner at 6 and get on the subway at 6:45, and it stalls and pauses and stands around, and I finally get into the lobby, jammed at 7:25, and there's Art Bauman, who I'd also tried, and the seats are third row, center, great, and the dancers are beautiful, sexy, over-eye-madeup, and his middle choreography looks weak, and Suzanne Farrell looks awful, as does her partner, but "Bhakti" is great, as is the TECHNIQUE of the DANCERS in "Choreographic Offering," though the choreography is nothing to rave about. In the audience is merely Rudolf Nureyev, Norman Singer, Melissa Hayden, Luis Fuentes, Deborah Jowett and Murray Ralph, Maurice Bejart, and thousands of students who got in for $2. Home to talk to John until 11, and then we're to bed.
DIARY 1709
TUESDAY, JANUARY 26. Up without sex, only a bit of cuddling, and I write to the two Polish authors, and to the Seavers, and to Paul with our new trip schedule, and to Bill and Svein-Erik (which leaves only Rita and Elaine to write to yet), and then John leaves just before 1, and I watch the Marx Brothers in "At the Circus" from 1-3, which is full of ads, since it's only an 87-minute film. I don't feel like doing anything about eating, so I simply make popcorn and lots of it, and I feel slightly ill as I finish the last in the bowl, but I'm not exactly what you'd call hungry. Decide I might as well write Rita, also, and do so, and then make some telephone calls on the job and go out to work from 6-8:30, getting to talk to the nephew of the old woman on 43rd Street, instead of to Mr. Iglesias, who nastily wasn't there when he said he'd be there, and find to my chagrin that the brother of the four sisters who don't speak English isn't there every night at 7, so I have to pass it on to John, who does only the Spanish-speaking ones. Hope to finish off the whole list of 8, but they just aren't home, and it's very cold out, windy and blowing from the Hudson River, and walking along Tenth Avenue is treacherous because of the ice on the sidewalks that no one bothers to clear away. My humidifier is going practically all the time I'm home, and still there's an effort to keep the humidity up to 45%, since it's so windy outside, the insides of the windows keep very cold, and all the moisture that hits from the insides freezes, and then when the sun comes out and warms the windows enough for the ice to melt, all the water seeps down either into the crack between the windows, or the outer side directly below the upper panes, and many times both, giving two sets of icicles on each window, and these are actually LONGER than 15", extending almost an inch below the LOWER panes. In the early morning, there is ice COMPLETELY COVERING four of the eight panes in the bedroom, which seems the coldest it's been, and it must be the 9° weather coupled with winds that reportedly have gusts up to 45 mph. I call John, but he's not home, which puzzles me, and I start writing Elaine, finally getting him at 11, and he's in bed already, and we sleep alone; I read Bradbury to 12:30.
DIARY 1710
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27. Spend the entire morning typing up "On the Defusion of Symbols," by Chris Wolff, from Elaine, and get that ready to send out to her, along with the letter to Rita, and decide I have to mark the fact that I WROTE to Elaine on my calendar, and am chagrined to find that I'd forgotten that Bob Jackins had called yesterday and we agreed to meet inside the back entrance of the Metropolitan at 1 pm, and I had just enough time to dress warmly for the cold outside, go out and catch the #6 bus, and ride up to Madison and 72nd and walk up the very cold streets to the impossibly windy Fifth Avenue entrance, around the corner of the museum, but it's 1:15 and he's not there, so I scoot up to "Fifty Centuries of Art" and he's not THERE, so I look down into the main lobby, and there he's sitting, so we're back up, and he only wants to look at paintings, so we look at all the regular museum's collections rearranged, and by the time we're finished at 3, I'm exhausted, so I agree to meet him at 11 at the Museum of Modern Art to see the movie and the Stein exhibit, and walk down the blustery Fifth Avenue to 72nd and watch the frozen people scurry by, and catch a bus to 8th, where I walk across for groceries, spending all but $3, and my check better come tomorrow. Back home to get a quick lunch at 4:30, and then settle things around the apartment before deciding to go out to the two places left (after getting the Chins on the telephone), and hope to get at least one, but neither is home, so I leave notes for both, pleading to the telephoned, but they haven't as of Friday noon. Back home early, at 7, and start typing to catch up with the diary, but only get five pages done before John's in, and he wants to work, and I'm prepared to read, but the phone from downstairs rings and it's Fred Courtney, who I don't remember, but he's up and warm and talking about "imperialistic, capitalistic America" and how it exploits Japan, and Far and Middle East, South America, and almost everyone, and he leaves at 9:30, saying he'll arrange our meeting with friends of his who've seen India for long periods of time. John and I eat, talk a lot about our relationship (see next page).
DIARY 1712
THURSDAY, JANUARY 28. Up and start necking nicely, but he gets out the Baby Magic and sits up on me and tries to bring me off, and I can't get him to even ACT excited, and I feel he's pressuring me to come, so I grab my cock and jerk myself off, and then he slips off and away into the bathroom, and I have to get up for a towel, wipe myself off, then crawl back into bed, to stay until he draws the drapes back. He's gone and I have very little to do today, except I decided to catch myself up on lists, and I can't find the list of "Days here, days at John's," and then decide it's a rather useless list, since currently it's as close to 50-50 (MWF here, because he has class those days; STS there, since weekends are usually spent around the car; and Tuesday more often alone than not). Catch the "how many days out" list up to date for 1970, making a new sheet through 1975, figuring averages, that I've passed an average of 20 days per month out, but haven't yet gotten to 2/3 the month out. Then work on the movie list, bringing that up to date, then Arnie calls, wanting me to come to Norma's for payroll, so I go at noon, and we talk till 2, when I go to the bank to cash my biggest check, for $213, and then have my eyes examined, which is the third-last item on my list (GREAT!), and get back to finish the movie list after lunch. Leave the apartment in a mess while I shower and eat by 7 pm, then down for the subway, which is quite prompt, while I gaze in mouth-watering delectation at a tight-jeaned dark-haired guy with a BIG crotch and LOVELY legs, and get to Brooklyn Academy to buy tickets for Saturday's performance, and "Messe pour le Temps Present" is awful in some parts and very good in others, namely "Dance" and "Couple," but the dancers get very little chance to show off their manifold talents, except to some jazzy rock music by Pierre Henri. John doesn't care for it, and we get home at 10:30 to push a car away from the garage opening, leaving its lights on, and we get upstairs for whiskey sours and another long conversation about the state of our relationship (see following pages). We touch very lightly going to sleep, and I may actually fall off before he does.
DIARY 1713
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29. Up and lay on each other, soft, wordlessly, for half an hour, and this can't be what he wants, because though it's very gentle and cuddly, it's hardly anything like exciting for either of us. But time will tell. He's off to work and I start telephoning hypnotists, surprised to find so many in the Yellow Pages, and then as luck would have it, I find the NEW Yellow Pages outside the door this afternoon, so I tear out the old pages with all the notes and put it into the new book. Then it's time for "Concentration" (AND SHE FINALLY CALLED ON FEBRUARY 1!!!), and I wash the dishes and fix up the drawers of stuff, and after I go out to buy groceries for the dinner this evening, I take stuff to the dry cleaners (after having sewed the button onto the bottom of the raincoat), and take the transparency out to have made into copies, type 7 pages to catch up with diary, I get back to vacuum the apartment with the new cleaning bags, though they don't seem to work as well, and then Arno calls to say that he'll be over to leave the keys with me for watering his plant while he's in St. Thomas for the next week, and then after he comes I scour the tub, then take a shower, absolutely ready for John's coming. Watch the TV hour of the Ringling Brothers, with some very sexy guys on tight wires and guarding elephants, while I section the grapefruit, pour the crab bisque into the pan and add some milk, shuck the corn, and stick the cloves into the ham in preparation for the dinner. He comes in at 8:30, showers, and we have plum wine to start with and champagne through the meal, and the ham is underdone, so we sit and talk while it cooks again, and we're so full, with the applesauce, that we don't want salad OR dessert, though I set it out to thaw, and we sit at the table, and John listens to my tale of hypnotists, and insists that it stems from some incident from my childhood, which he tried for a couple of hours to get at (see following pages), and I'm impressed not so much by his analytical abilities but by his DESIRE to get to the bottom of my fear, so that it will help me AND him on this trip. Leave everything on the table and climb into bed at 11, to lay together only briefly before lights out and sleep comes.
DIARY 1720
SATURDAY, JANUARY 30. Wake without the alarm at 8 and do him VERY slowly which both of us like quite a bit, and he doesn't bother to oblige me because it's about 9. He gets up and showers and I'm in to clear off the table and set it again for breakfast, making ham and eggs in a sort of omelet, with toast and orange juice, and he went off to work about 10. Bob Jackins called just then to check whether the movie was at 11 or 1, and I said 11, and then Bob Rosinek called to tell me about a press party on Monday from 5-8 pm for his radio program, and then I had to dress and leave for the Museum of Modern Art for "The Big Parade," which re-emphasized all the timeless stupidities of war: the mother sorry to see her boy going off to war, but assuming it MUST be done, the girl friend laughing about how EXCITING it all is, the friends egging each other into the enlistment, the happiness of the parades sending men off to kill other men, the stupidities of Americans on French soil, the cruelties of battle, the noise, the smell, the death, the inconsequentialness of which SIDE you're on, that everyone is a brother, and that the ANGER that "the enemy" killed your friend can turn to COMPASSION when you give a cigarette to a dying one. And though John Gilbert was awkward in the comedic scenes, he was quite good in the silent anger when everyone tried to congratulate him for the "good job" he did during the war to get his leg shot off. Don't feel like staying at the museum, so I leave Bob, inviting him to my place at 3, and get home at 2 to wash dishes again and look through the mail, getting ready to eat lunch at 2:45, when Bob comes in, so I eat while he watches, we talk about this and that, and I go off to the Gallery of Modern Art at 4 for Jean Renoir's "La Marsaillaise," which isn't very good, but thankfully subtitled, and out at 6 to get home for a quick dinner of peanut butter and toast and yogurt, and subway to Bejart in Brooklyn, and "Bach Cantata" is VERY long and VERY boring, which is due to few good dancing sections, "Nomos Alpha" is quite funny and striking with Bortoluzzi, and "Les Vainquers" is good and bad, but great at the "relax to death" ending. Home with John at 11:309 and bed quick.
DIARY 1721
SUNDAY, JANUARY 31. Wake at 9, and we both go at each other with Baby Magic, and I take out after him until he comes grindingly slow, tortured sperm barely able to squeeze past my pressuring fingers, and then he takes care of me, stopping when I come so that I have to thrash myself against his agonizingly limp hand to get the last spasms out, and we lay together, completely drained, until we get up and he starts making breakfast of waffles, and I start reading the Times. Breakfast, and then he does many of the things around the apartment that I imagine he wanted to do LAST Sunday, and didn't, like clean out the humidifier, wash the outside of the windows, clean some other things, and change the bedclothes. At about 4 I've done the puzzles, both of them, and read both the Times and the Voice, and we're only scheduled for the Eagle's dinner at 7:30. Then we're out for a walk (after listening to the Apollo 14 takeoff on the radio, not nearly as nice as on TV), and it's cold and blowing, but we enjoy the sunny Promenade with its dozen people and people looking out their apartment windows, and then we get ice cream cones, and I suggest we smoke. John likes the idea, so he sets everything up, and the music is playing on the radio and I get very high and start cuddling with him, and get his jumpsuit off, and he's quite stiff, so I'm playing, and get the Baby Magic, and play and play, and he comes again with great feeling, and I get off into my private thoughts (see next page), and then it's 7, and I have to drag myself off the floor and get dressed warmly enough to go out into the 14° weather for the Eagle. They have some sort of beef dish, with mashed potatoes and salad, and people are all around, including the cute young guy, who isn't wearing a shirt this time, and the beauteous-legged fellow, who's not so neat in belled blue jeans, and the shirtless wonder INTRODUCES himself to John as Eddy, and John says he has a nice chest when he felt it. I shouted at him that he should have invited him home. Then we try the Zodiac, but the door is locked, but the Barn is open, so we get in there about 9 (see following pages), and out at 11:45, very tired back to John's, falling into bed.
DIARY 1729
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1. Up and lay quietly on top of each other, and I'm home to find that Don O'Shea's been here, since there's some sort of microscope-like metalwork piece on my coffee table, joined with what looks like a steel-blue clamp of marvelous purity of design. Then the phone rings and it's Miss Howard, who says she tried to get me last week to say that I'm going to be on the show, and that I should report at 9 am Wednesday for orientation and to watch the taping of some shows, and the day will last until 3:30 pm, and then at 9:30 am Tuesday of next week, for the actual taping. This is great! Type 10 pages to catch up on the diary, and then since I have nothing else to do, I told myself I'd get rid of the "Writing" drawer by making a book out of it, and I settle down to do that, deciding to put "Art" and "Poetry and Songs" into the LETTER drawer, since I'm not able to put any of that into the book itself, and by the time I'm finished for the afternoon---and it's much slower going than I'd hoped, since there's much retyping, and much little-bitty-bit shuffling before I feel that it's in good enough shape for typing---I've only put 28 pages into OLD DIARY, and I had to retype 13 of those pages, only 15 being able to be just labeled and inserted. Then I'm shocked into realizing that it's 5:30, and I was supposed to be at Bob's press party for his WBAI radio shows at 5! So I shave and quickly catch subways through the terribly rainy, blowy night, and get there just after 6, having a great time there talking with Bob, Nina, Richard Lamparski, Rochelle Owens, and Bob Milne (see DIARY 1726-1728) and end up going back to Mattachine headquarters with Bob to talk to other people there, and I telephone back every half hour to see if Don's back, and then about 10:15 decide that I really should get back anyway, and walk home in the blowing evening to find Don STILL not there, and I type the three pages about the evening that I falsely attributed to 2/2/71, just because I'd already recorded in my log that I'd TYPED 10 pages today, and knew I wouldn't be typing many pages tomorrow, and Don comes in at 11, and we sit around and talk to 1, about absolutely everything, and I end VERY tired.
DIARY 1730
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2. Don's up and out by 9, and we sit talking while he has breakfast of increasingly soggy breakfast cereal, then I get back to the Old Diary and retype 19 more pages, just putting 16 pages in right from Old Essays, and get up to page 53, and sort through the Homosexual Story Ideas, but type only a few pages before I have to leave to meet John at 3 at Boosey for the walk down to the Indonesian travel agency, and the girl doesn't know too much about what's going on, but she gives us some very special reports, typed and mimeographed, about extra-special trips in the vicinity of Bali, and then someone from the embassy comes in and tells us even more about some of the islands, saying that it IS possible, if really planned for, to get to some of the REAL out-islands, and we agree that we'll phone him and see him in HIS office for more maps and schedules and planning. John has to do some shopping uptown, so I come home and read the mail and eat dinner and subway with Don to the Bejart Ballet after we have a rather lengthy dinner at Cafe des Sports, and my duck in orange sauce is quite good, the skin being burnt and crisp to my taste, but his veal is very tough, he says, and he dislikes very much the idea of French fries with the meal, and then the service is so slow we're forced to forego dessert and he gulps down coffee, and we dash through the subway system to get to the ballet on time at 8. It's on the subway train that we begin to talk about Joan, and I ask if she and he'd ever talked about ME in any special way, but Don says, rightly, he hasn't the vaguest idea what I'm talking about, and I say that I'm spending the night away from home with a GUY, and he doesn't seem quite to know what to do with that, saying that it really doesn't make much difference, and he's not surprised---I suppose the clearest idea I got from him is that he would rather I NOT have told him about it, but since I was thinking of having John over to spend the NEXT night in bed with ME, it would be far better that he knew beforehand. Don doesn't like "Bhakti," calling it "Indianized Gene Kelly," but likes "Rite of Spring," as I do. To John's and talk to 12, bed.
DIARY 1731
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3. Subway from John's to Rockefeller Center on the 2 and the 1, and get there just at 9 to talk with three or four women who are also waiting in studio 6A, and then a few more come in and Norm Blumenthal the producer comes in and makes fun of all of us and establishes a rapport of mutual disrespect which is supposed to put us at our ease. He gives us the rules of the game, interspersed with remarks that I'm a fag, the gals should put their skirts down, and everyone should meet them in his hotel room---"You KNOW which hotel I'm talking about." Then we're into the studios for a practice game, and I have the second one with the older woman from the island who looks like Ann Miller, and we both do HORRIBLY, and I can't even think what the rebus is. Jokes are made about our awful performance, and then we're in the audience for the two shows to be shown March 1 and 2nd, since Friday WILL be devoted to the moonwalk, and they don't lose ANY tapes. That's over at 12:15 and we all go to the IBM-like NBC commissary to eat, and the food sits like a lump in my stomach, and the Miller-girl can't even eat anything and leaves early. We all sit around and talk, and get down to the studios too early, and the audio director fills us in on all the scandals (and Jack Barry's coming BACK with "The Reel Game" on ABC on Mondays at 8:30) and the gossip (Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring was the building hooker, going to bed with EVERYONE, and George Kwesham, or whoever Captain Kangaroo is, used to be Clarabelle, and Buffalo Bob owns half of the state of California), and then Blumenthal's back with some mnemonic scheme for remembering the countries of South America in size-order, and the woman in charge goes out of her mind, and we talk about her trip to Surinam and up some jungle river, and I talk about the trip to San Carlos, and the time passes, I get made up, and we tie for the first puzzle in a wall game (Creating a mAISLEd sensation), and she wins the second after I give her "Covering up their tracks" with "Covering your tracks." So I get luggage. Water Arno's plant, John here and we eat at Evening Star, great sex with Baby Magic, and bed at 11, when Don comes in.
DIARY 1732
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4. Don and John talk a bit about Bejart, then John leaves at 8:30 and Don at 9:15, after deciding there's really nothing I want to see at the talks, having missed one by J.A. Wheeler, and I get right down to the OLD DIARY, and finish the Homosexual Story Ideas, go all through the characters, relieved to find that I'm able to transfer 65 whole pages from story ideas, and then I just can't leave the things alone, and even though I was thinking of going out to work some, since I didn't do ANYTHING since I turned my stuff into Arnie LAST Thursday, but it's raining something fierce out, and blowing very hard, so I just don't FEEL like going out, and DO feel like continuing with the Old Diary, so I dig into Copied from Readings, and it's harder because I decide to retype pages that I'd cut in half to separate out sections from the continuously-typed Jottings, and the half-pages wouldn't be anchored properly in the Old Diary, so I had to retype all of them, and I did. When I finished at about 7, the only thing I had time for (after retyping something like 28 pages during the whole day, and transferring 139 pages, which felt great, including the best part of two pages for the table of contents, which was the real reason for wanting to ORGANIZE everything so nicely, to get to the grand total of 224 pages down already in just three days, so the rest of the job shouldn't take more than about 5 or six days) was to shower and shave quickly, and get out to meet John in his seat for the first of the Nureyev performances with the Australian Ballet. "Don Quixote" was borrowed from the Royal Ballet, but sadly it didn't have all the varied nationalistic dances that the Bolshoi filled their version with, and Nureyev and Aldous were really nothing like Vasiliev or Plisetskaya, so there was a great deal of excitement missing, and when the leading dancers of the Aussie troupe came on, there was no fire, either, so it really isn't a very good ballet company to see, though we both figure we can stand to sit through one more evening of shorter pieces, hopefully to get a better idea of what the company can do without Rudi jumping around. Home to snack and bed early.
DIARY 1733
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5. John's out of bed after a bit of cuddling, and I turn on TV for the moonwalk, and after he leaves I do the dishes, since their schedule has fallen behind because of communication difficulties between one space suit and another, but finally they're out on the moon and I sit around with great feeling watching the logo at the bottom of the screen that says "LIVE COLOR PICTURES FROM THE MOON." How DIFFERENT this was from ANYTHING that any of the science fiction stories or films had imagined! Watch hypnotized until about 2, and Chu calls to say there's pressure to get work into the office, and I figure I can only lie about 4 surveys done, and he says that's not worth bringing in to the office, and I say I have lots of appointments through the day, anyway, and finally the moon transmissions get boring about 2:30, and I make up a list of places to go around 105th Street, and I'm up there to get lots of work done, including talking to three guys who just came over from Calcutta trying to find jobs in civil engineering, and we talk for about an hour about my upcoming trip, and then later I get involved in writing a letter for a Haitian who's not comfortable out of French, telling the Bureau of Immigration to watch out for some gal named Orisa St. Charles, who stole his $1500 worth of furniture when he was out of the apartment. Again, once I've gotten BACK into the interviewing business, it's extremely fascinating, and the people are just NOT the kind I'm accustomed to meeting, including the very cultured Haiti family in the Regent Hotel that took so long to talk with that I was late getting to Mrs. Malekos, but she talked to me even after 10 pm, and I ended up putting in one of my longest days IN THE FIELD ever, 8 whole hours in the field, not even beginning to do all the paperwork connected with it. Home at 10:30 and John's waiting for me, and I'm starved, so I have a great ham omelet, and he'd put out three eggs for me just when I'd decided to have three eggs in it, while I was washing my hair. We eat and sit around and talk, and while my hair's drying, the time runs past midnight, but it's fine since we really don't have to set the alarm for Saturday morning.
DIARY 1734
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6. Up for very pleasant sex, again, and John goes to the office about 9, and I get down immediately to the paperwork, and finish about 10:30, then telephone a few people, getting them over the phone, and find I don't have enough CES-3's to carry me through today, so I try to get in touch with Arnie, but he's just not around. Phoned Fred yesterday for the ballet on Sunday with dinner at John's, when Joe called to say that his uncle died and he wouldn't be able to attend as planned, though he was very sorry about it and really didn't want to attend the funeral, but he had to go because of his mother. I made up a new sheet for the day, determined to get to all FOUR areas I have left, since I'm starting a job as a crew leader, finally, on Monday, and I have three places left in the 40's and 50's, so I start there, then subway up to the 80's, where I have two places left, but I have no luck with ANY of the first five. Then I get up to the 140's, where the luck's better since I'm going into new territory, and get a lot done, and then bus down to the 106th Street area about 6, to find that the crud at the Regent Hotel isn't there to meet at 6 pm, and try a few last ones in THAT area, and have no luck, which is good, so I subway back home about 6:30, forget about the paperwork in the haste to have dinner before the Nureyev performance this evening, and get to the theater WITH John, since he didn't have enough time to go home and showed up here, where he finished off the ham and the apple sauce, and I had hamburger, and we both shared some great green beans and even started on the salad which was left over from last Friday, which we didn't eat. To the City Center and it's quite a crowd for the ballet, "The Rendezvous" is all fluttery Ashton choreography that isn't very good, "The Display" is almost embarrassing in its melodrama and rapid change from playfulness to fighting to violence to revenge by rape, to love FROM rape, to abandonment. "Raymonda" was about the best thing they did, even the regular troupe looking pretty good, but it still doesn't rank anywhere NEAR the top five or six companies in the world. Back home to cuddle a bit before falling asleep rather early at 11.
DIARY 1735
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7. Up about 8 and lay until 9, then I pull the drapes back for the bright sunlight (yesterday was the first brilliantly sunny and above-freezing day for a couple of weeks, and it was pleasantly appreciated), and do him very slowly, and with the vibrator, and he enjoys that, and then we're up to shave and shower and pack up all his clothes and supplies and groceries for the dinner this evening, and I talk all my work along, since I'll be leaving for Varick from his place Monday evening, and we trundle everything into the subway about 10:30 and get to his place, where I start reading the magazine and theater section I'd brought with me, and work both puzzles, and he naps for a bit, and I go take the work to Arnie's at 1, after discovering to my dismay at 12:30 that I'd forgotten to do the paperwork, and get it done in a flurry, and Arnie's late to the ballet because he didn't watch the time closely enough while getting all my work back from me. It feels good to have an empty briefcase, though he's saying that the first few weeks of my crew-leading job with Chu will be rather hectic. Back to John's, and we have tasty lunch of fried tacos that he bought this morning, and I finish the puzzle while he naps, and then Fred comes in about 5:15, after I showered and John began worrying where he was. Dinner is rather hasty, and the nibbles beforehand of chick peas and honey in mushroom caps were good, the chicken and mushrooms on spaghetti was tasty, the salad went past very fast and the mousse was good, too, though we had to rush out at 7:15, luckily grabbing a subway right there, and we got there just in time. Fred kept insisting about talking of "Capitalist Imperialist America," and he could only just resist raising his voice another 30 decibels in shouting some leftist slogan when the "Firebird" appeared from the blue-suited partisans as an incendiary that the group would catch fire from, get warmth from, and resurrect as a martyred symbol after his death. "Bach Sonata" wasn't very good, though it was better than "Erotica" in that it had Jorge Donn. Back to John's in the driving rain at 10, smoke and sex (see following pages) and numb to bed at 1:00!!
DIARY 1738
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8. Up numb at 8, and the apartment's still cold to 10:10, when I leave for Arnie's to meet him to go in to Varick Street. In the meantime I finished the puzzles' last few words, got everything of mine into the briefcase, put the dishes away from last night that John had to do himself because we all rushed off to the ballet, and left rather late after listening to the news. Met Arnie on the way to the subway, and got a bit late into the office. Chu took me over and oriented me on all the forms, and then Madylyn Lee called me to give me the rest of her information, and Chu took me in to see August, who was impressed by my experiences at IBM of supervising and hiring and firing, and the job was mine. Back again to talk to Chu until about 12, and then I was introduced to the group after signing a new contract, but NOT being sworn in. They were griping a bit about waiting around for so long, but I apologized, and in talking with them, they seemed like a rather good group. Chu staggered me by saying that all the records had to be kept in the office, and I figured Arnie would have some way around it, but he didn't, except to keep duplicates. I got bogged down in lists and Intercomms and exchanges for "Spanish only," and Chu finally gave me 73 new cases for them to work on, I talked to them each alone about having no problems, and gave out the new work and arranged for three of them to call me at 4:30, when I was sure to be home. It seems they're a good crew! But I worked around with forms and questions until AFTER 4:30, when they asked me about my "Concentration" appearances, and I got home at 5:10, getting calls quickly from Pasko and Hu, but not until 10 did Lee call to make an appointment for observing her tomorrow. I was sitting reading the Times at 6 when John walked in, too tired for class, and he worked in the bedroom while I talked to Arnie on the phone for about an hour, getting acquainted with my new job, and then we ate and drank banana daiquiris, and talked about the trip a bit, and then John said he was very tired and wanted to go to bed at 10:30, saying I didn't have to join him, but my day at the office had been hard, so I did, and slept immediately.
DIARY 1739
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9. Up to vibrator, and he comes with Baby Magic, then works in the living room while I catch up with my diary to finish ten pages, and then dig into the "Humor" section for the fifth-from-the-end transferal from the Writing drawer to Old Diary. Down to get his keys duplicated, pick up his photos from Halloween, get a few groceries from Gristedes, and get a half gallon of wine, and then he leaves about 12:30. I have lunch and subway down to Varick at 2 pm, to hear small newscasts of some disaster, but it's only in the evening that John tells me there's been an earthquake in Los Angeles that killed 34, injured 1000, caused $1 billion in damage, and made 80,000 people evacuate from in front of a dam in the San Fernando Valley. Is this the beginning of the end??? Get to work duplicating all the records, find that #2000 is a duplicate of #1999 and can be thrown away, and Chu says I SHOULD observe Helen Lee, and I say I am, tonight at 5:30, he asked where I meet her, I say 47 Market, he says he'll drive me there, and we talk about his cooking expertise and the rent situation in New York, and I'm there just a bit late for a surprised Miss Lee, who acts much like Cissy Wong in her nervous laughing, her rapid speech when she's unsure of herself, and her pawing my arm when something I say is funny. We try a number of places without luck, and finally talk to Mr. Delores Mercado until 7, he's a doll with an adorable pup and silent wife, and I dash up to 197 Bowery to meet a disgruntled Frank Hu, and I verify that they won't let him into the Andrews Hotel. Leave him at 7:30 and subway to John's, and shower until he's finished at 8:30, then we have wine and steak and salad for dinner, then he wants to go out for a walk, which I don't care for, having just walked for two hours, but we're out onto the freezing Promenade for a sparkling clear evening, then walk up to Danny's to stand and listen to "Superstar Jesus Christ" by Murray Head, and that's what I've been hearing at work the last couple days. There's no one there who'll even look at us, so we're back at 10:30, and get right into bed, early to be sure, but we're both tired enough, and both fall right to sleep.
DIARY 1740
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10. Wake and cuddle to 7:45, out of his place at 8:10! Home before 8:45 and type one page to catch diary up to date almost in real time, and get to work on Old Diary again, getting up to 255, and then get off to the Museum of Modern Art at noon to see Eleanore Duse in "Cenere," Minnie Maddern Fiske in "Vanity Fair," Gabrielle Rejane in "Madame Sans-Gene," and Sarah Bernhardt in "La Dame aux Camelias," all of whom overact by present-day standards except Duse, and she just had to sit around and look old and dejected, and it seemed to have met up with her in real life. That's out at 1:10, and I'd told Frank to call me at 1, and get back to put the phone on the hook and he calls fairly soon, and we agree to meet in the office tomorrow at 2:30. Then Harold comes over and bends my ear for a good long time about nothing in particular, and God in general, and others telephone to report in, and there seems to be a lot to keep me busy. Call Milne and he says that there's a meeting he's going to at Cornell Medical Center tomorrow at 3, and that interferes with my meeting at 2, darn it! Read some of the Bradbury short stories to help pass the time, and go out for groceries for sloppy joes for John's arrival here this evening, and he shows up and works, while I'm in the bedroom working on the Old Diary, and I show him some of it, and he says that some of the pieces are quite good! Amazing, since I think it's the only bits of mine he's ever read that he liked. Start on the sloppy joes about 8 and finish with them at 8:45, and then about 9:30 we're ready to eat, finishing at ten just in time to watch "Time IS" on Flick-Out, but it's rather conventional, and Helen calls me during it, which is a pity. I shower then at 10:30 and join John on the bed, and we start playing around, and much enjoy the evening, just as he wants it, and get out the Baby Magic, and both of us come very nicely, and then crawl into bed to talk about our work during the day, about his party tomorrow at the Tcherepnin's, and about the fact that we're about to have an anniversary soon! In fact, the next Saturday I check, and we met on the 15th, so it's nearly a year!
DIARY 1741
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11. Up and cuddle without saying a word, and he's off to work and I have breakfast, since it seems to be a habit I'm getting into, and work through Old Diary until about noon, when I have lunch in preparation for going in to work at 1. Talk to Bob Milne and arrange to get into the class late, and take everything down to work intent on getting it finished quickly, but Chu doesn't have the work ready to hand out yet, Hu is late coming in, and Bordainick is late in calling, and then Barbara stops by and regales me and the fat lady and Navarro with stories about the fags who live in her building, and the lady-men that she's had to put up with who visit her friend. I start, somehow, talking about sex with her, and she seems quite intent on making a personal relationship out of the work acquaintance, but I can do without THAT. Then there are more fusses with new work, including duplicates, and when I finally get out of there, it's 5 pm! This is not taking as few hours as I would like, and Pasko on the phone is being difficult, since he says he's been threatened by a knife, and thus doesn't want to work after dark AT ALL, and I have to tell him that I'm not happy with his production record, and he'd better do something about it, and fast. Back home at 5:30, loaded down with blank forms for everyone, and Bordainick comes in to get the special places forms, and John calls to say that "Five Easy Pieces" is at the Trans-Lux 85th, so I call Eddie and get tickets for 8 pm, and Bordainick talks about God as I start cooking the last of the sloppy joes for supper, and gulp them down by 7:30, in time to catch two subways up to 85th and Madison, and the flick is rather good, both John and I liking it, and we drive into Brooklyn, where I'm thirsty, but all he has to offer is water, and he said he talked to Bob Malchie, whose birthday was today, and he wanted to do something today, and he said that he'd postpone the celebration until after Art's performance, which is taking up so much of his time. We sit and talk, and get to bed about 11, which is getting to be quite a habit, and sex doesn't start this time, so we sleep easily.
DIARY 1742
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12. Home just before 9 and again get down to Old Diary. I've fallen into the habit of doing the final retyping of a section, and then recording that I've finished to that point during the day, whereas actually I've gone far beyond that by typing "OLD DIARY" and page number and identifying information on the top of all the sheets to be merely ADDED to the Old Diary, and therefore am sometimes as much as 150-175 pages AHEAD of where I said I was on that day. So for the most part of today, after finishing up to OLD DIARY 377, I added up to more-than-page-500 by putting in all the finished sheets which didn't have to be retyped. This takes the whole day, and then John calls to say that since the weather is nice outside, we should meet in the lobby of the Tcherepnin's, eat dinner, and walk across the park to Automation House. Then Harold Bordainick comes in with more work, and he casually asks if I need money for the weekend, since the checks haven't come in yet. I say I do, fearing I would have to borrow from John, who might not have anything, and at 5:30 it's too late to try any banks. So Harold takes me down to his butcher on the west side of 9th Avenue between 55th and 54th, and it's the same place I bought the ribs for Jeff's evening, and he's very nice and helpful, Hugo is, and I resolve to give him more business for cashing my $22.50 check from Hurok. Back to shower and shave and walk up to John's at 8:30, and meet Fred Courtney on the street, kissing him greetings, and we chat, but he's bound down to pick up his hat, so he can't join us for dinner. We avoid Frini's because of the guitarist, and pass Istanbul, which looks good, so we're in, and I have a small portion of tasty Turkish chicken for $2.50, not bad, and we're across the park, John lugging his bag, for Automation House at 9:45. In and down to the basement for eyes-closed manipulation of long white plastic cylinders, then up the elevator for the space-helmeted boy-girl group-grope on the top flood (sadly not nude, as in the kinescopes), and John's angry because she rooted him off the floor just as he was getting into it. We started sitting around silly blue balls, making sounds. Out at 11, walk home in cold.
DIARY 1743
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13. John goes in to the office at 9, after we have nice sex, both of us, and I work on more of Old Diary until 11, taking some time out for the telephone about work, and get to the Modern for a whole series of very early films, from the totally static "Funeral of Queen Victoria" to the more moving "Rescued by Rover" to the almost linear "Great Train Robbery," the melodramatic "Tatters," and in the last three there were plots and subplots about babies being kidnapped, which says something about the times. Then there's the oleo-like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the Melies inspired "Dream of the Rarebit Eater," very funny, and the "War in the Air," very H.G. Wellsian. "Rescued from an Engle's Nest" was about the funniest of them all, with the blatant juxtaposition of real and fake scenery, again with a baby taken off, this time by an impossibly slow, wing flapping stuffed eagle. "Life of an American Fireman" wasn't really worth including. Back to type two diary pages to almost catch up, and then since John doesn't want to watch TV tonight, he calls to say he'll be going to the Thalia and seeing "Weekend," and Arno calls and he comes over to argue about how many Academy Awards Shelley Winters won for which picture, and we sit around looking at "Patch of Blue," and I decide to fix the pork chops while I'm watching it, which tends to send Arno home, though he uses the excuse that melodramas tend to make him cry if they're successful, and obviously he doesn't want to break down in MY house watching MY TV. So I say I'll tell him the ending, though it's upbeat, the only tragedy being Sidney Poitier running down the steps to give Elizabeth Hartman her music box, but the bus to the special school has already left. John's in exactly at 11, and we have some drinks and get into bed to lounge around and talk, he's beginning to feel better about the book, and finds he can only work three evenings and all day Saturday, as opposed to practically every night, and he doesn't feel guilty about going to his dance classes anymore. I'm beginning to feel rather depressed since I'm finishing up the Old Diary and really DON'T know what I'm going to do to fill up my time NEXT, particularly if Census ends.
DIARY 1744
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14. Up feeling rather tired, and John's out of bed before anything can happen, so I get up and fry bacon and eggs for our breakfast, and we sit around reading the Times, and I suggest we go to the Bronx Zoo since the day isn't rainy, like yesterday was, all day, and we drive up about 11, and it's very cold outside, with snow flurries, and there's a 75¢ admission charge each, and the $1 parking turns John off, so we park outside and walk in the Fordham Gate, and walk past the locked bird cage, into the aquatic bird house, pleasantly empty, damp, filled with smells and bird calls, and we enjoy watching the darts of feathered color through the branches, even if a bit too many of the branches are plastic. Past the rather empty duck ponds and into the monkey house, where pairs of mandrills cuddle in teddy-bear comfort, across to the bird houses, filled with roaches in the "Jewels of the Dark" section, though the birds are spectacular, and we enjoy seeing all we're about to see in India, Java, Burma, Ceylon, and other eastern climes, then out the back down to the wolf walk and the bear cages, still quite cold and very icy, and around to the "World of the Dark," but it's not very well done, being better in Tucson and Houston, and many of the cages are empty, and some are too dark, and some just too light. John's feeling very tired, and I take it as some sort of annoyance, and we leave at 2 to get tied up in traffic getting to the Harlem River Drive, and down to the Chinatown section so I can check on people's work about 3. He gets annoyed that I don't want to walk to the Madison-Monroe section, so I say we should just leave, getting to Brooklyn at 3:45. I sit and work on the puzzles to completion while he cooks and sleeps, and at 6 we sit down to a fabulous sauce on the tongue, underdone pasta, and good Italian tomatoes from a Progresso can, and a jelly roll of his own making for dessert. Out to the Academy to wait under the balls for Phil Ramey from 7:15 to 7:45, when I leave the ticket in his name, waving to Fred, and get upstairs just as the curtain rises on "Les Vainquers." The lotus section at the start is great, and the audience gives 12 curtain calls of "Romeo and Juliet," and 17 for the final Firebird. To John's at 10:30, he's high, I do him (see next page).
DIARY 1746
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15. Up foggy, leave at 8:15, home to see Josie STILL working, which is unexpected, as we got keys to the front door, the mailboxes are in (though the numbers aren't up yet, and there's no sign of a package room or of a lobby attendant), and a letter saying that it would be taken out on February 14. But she said they were told to come into work, and the lawyers had some sort of agreement going, and maybe Walentis had made a mistake by putting all the money into the intercom so early, without the court's approval. Maybe things will work out, anyway. Get to work immediately on final paperwork at 9, and interrupted by telephone calls and I can't get in touch with Angelo to tell him not to come in today, but tomorrow, to the office, so he can sign that stupid form. But he's not there. Others call and say they'll be up, and I'm still not finished with the paperwork when Angelo comes in, asks many questions, then Frank comes in and is rather more businesslike, and John is in, defensive about his low production level, and everyone's here to 1, when all leave but Angelo, first in and last out, and I still rather think he might be gay, and he's rather cute and nicely-bodied into the bargain, and his production rate is the best of them all. Out the door at 1 to the Modern, and Angelo holds the elevator as Deborah calls to say she's sick, and will be in the office tomorrow. Out to "Under Two Flags" by Tod Browning, but it's not very good Browning, though it's a reasonably good Algerian desert-boiler. Back just after 3 to see Helen waiting for me on the steps, and she's out quickly, thank goodness, and I get down to the Times, finishing reading everything by 7, and I've washed dishes, too, in that time, and then John comes in and works while I still try to finish the paperwork, but not doing it, and at 10 he has pork chops and I have chicken, and at 10:45 we're into bed, and I take the vibrator to John, and he lounges with it, groaning and straining his legs and his chest, sucking his stomach in and arching his back, and his hairy pectorals are enormously sexy in the shadows from the light in the next room, and I grab the vibrator and come, then he comes himself, and we groan and kiss and sleep at 12.
DIARY 1747
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16. Alarm at 7:50, set for weekend, and John's up and to work. I work on the census in the bedroom, then type five pages to catch up on the diary, then go out to the bank, buying four paperbacks: "The French Lieutenant's Woman" by Fowles, and something about Tolkein, and, mistakenly, a book of essays by Clarke, and a new Lovecraft selection of stories, and then go for groceries and buy toothpaste, then back to pick up the mail, and up to put everything away and read the mail, and then John goes off to work at 12:30, and Chu calls to say he wants to add someone to my crew, and I get down there at 2 to begin work, and after dozens of interruptions by Chu and Arnie and phone calls and telling Marty Loritzsen that there's no work for him, I get everything done by 4:45, to dash into the subway and get uptown to find Jim Rodriguez JUST in the building, and I give him new work. (Yes, forgot that John Kim called in the morning, wanting to talk about his drive across the United States, and I told him to call me tomorrow at noon, but he calls at 2:30 to say he's been drunk and "hanging over" from the night before, so he might come Friday), and then dash out for the 6 pm showing of "The Greatest Question" and "Sally of the Sawdust," with W.C. Fields, by D.W. Griffith, at the new Bijou theater, and they're pretty good, but hardly great, and then subway to John's at 9:50, having no money left after buying 5 tickets for $5 for the Bijou (and two boxes of 25¢ popcorn), and borrow $10 and shower and wash hair and drink a vodka sour, and talk about the book, John insisting that 100% of the people who read my book (John and Marty and Jerri), ALL of them disliked it; Dutton would keep manuscripts (unsolicited ones) for 6-8 months, I should try something ELSE like painting or sculpture or music or dance or drama, or other forms of writing, like essays or speeches, but I wasn't doing anything terribly NEW, and he expected that I WANTED to have a plot, as Meredith accused me of not having, and I quoted Bradbury, Woolf, Wylie as being my idols, and THEY write only incidents, but he kept saying that I'd NEVER sell, and I was only making myself frustrated doing TRADITIONAL things. He kept urging me to do something DIFFERENT, and I insisted if I SAW it, I'd DO it. Bed at 12.