1971 3 of 5
DIARY 1834
THURSDAY, APRIL 1. Play with stiff cocks until John leaves, and mail brings back two copies of Acid House, finally the original sending to Geis, and it "doesn't fit into their schedule," and a short note from Henry Clay Kern, who apologizes for being late, suggests paperback, and doesn't charge me! I sit down and write nice long letters to Elaine, thanking her for her response and asking her to send it back to me, and to Dr. MacLean, assuring him that his hospital isn't mentioned by name or location, and I send off the original to Random House, ticking off another in my grand list of people to send it to. Mope through the day, not doing anything in particular, and get out at 8:10 to hastily walk to Madison and 63rd with my suitcase for the weekend in Lewisburg, and at 8:30 this short old fellow looking like a dizzy Einstein opens the door and ushers us into an incredible rabbit-warren of an office, with out-of-order lights, forcing us to feel our way for a drink of water in the bathroom, blinkless telephones, causing him to push and push at the lines until he hits the right one, sometimes cutting off the person who's calling, and stacks and stacks of brochures and booklets and obsolete items, except that John notices a stack of letters that he simply rubber-banded and put aside. He got down to the trip, soon asking us how much we wanted to spend, relieving John, and he started out by suggesting Beppu on Kyushu, and when we turned that down, he took all the time on the Philippines and told us about "ze land Dyaks and ze ZEE Dyaks" of Borneo and Brunei, so we're going to spend about 7 days there in constant company of a guide, since there's no real tourist facilities there yet. He seems to have discovered Borobudur, flown into Khajuraho, talked with princes and kings, spoken their language, and tells us to see everything in Indonesia and very little in Malaysia, though he adds Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in Thailand, and even hopes he might be able to get us into Bangkok. Best of all, John trusts him, so he cuts and adds days without our saying a word, and finally we leave him at 11:30, getting all kinds of shot, health, water, ice cube, clothing, and packing data. To John's LATE.
DIARY 1835
FRIDAY, APRIL 2. Wake at 7:45 and John's immediately out of bed, packing, and we drive off in the car just before nine and I've forgotten my wallet and watch, so we drive back and cross the bridge about 9:15, crowded, and through the tunnel and out route 46 and finally hit route 80, which is nice where it exists, and lousy where it doesn't. He wants to get a new tire, and change the oil, and that takes over an hour at a Shell station, during which time we have omelets cooked over a coal stove which is kept going 24 hours, when possible, and has filled the whole place so full of smoke that John's eyes redden. I get "Tertium Organum" out and sit and read for a bit, and by noon it's fixed, but something else's come up which means we have to stop in Stroudsburg. Through the Delaware Water Gap in the streaming rain, and it's rather impressive, for the staid east coast, and to the VW repair shop and leaf through old Playboys and other books, and get back into TO until about 2:30, and then we're back into the car (having spent $60 on John's Mastercharge, and gotten nowhere yet), and drive directly through on 80 to the turn-off at Milton, stopping for a one-cent sale on hot fudge Carvels for 39¢, and down to Lewisburg just as Tom drives in about 4:30. Topsy and Esme and Alison and Becky all greet us, and we have some drinks and the kids throw themselves at us, and we talk about their old times, and then we have dinner of veal and mushrooms and great apple pie for dessert, and sit at the table talking about their problems, and we tell them about the trip and Backster and I tell them about the 1, 2, 3, 4-D examples of TO and Tom's falling asleep, so at 11:30 I say I'm going up for a shower, expecting John to follow me to bed, but he's still downstairs talking with Kathy about the woman across the street who seems mentally retarded, or kept down by her family, and we chat about other things, including some of the problems around the house, and finally the dishes are done and we're upstairs at 1:30, and I'm surprised at John for staying up so late, and I pin a towel across the "eyebrow" windows that afford us a floor-level view of the Susquehanna rolling greenly along outside.
DIARY 1836
SATURDAY, APRIL 3. Awake about 9 and get downstairs for a great bacon and poached egg and muffin breakfast, and we leave everything on the table for Kathy to clean up and go outside to wander along the swollen river, getting muddy in the gunk from previous flooding, and tossing sticks into the river for the avidly retrieving Topsy and male friend. See three rather appealing kids digging into their fort, telling about what the flood did to it, and we wander back to where the Bull Run Creek makes this part of the stream bank somewhat like an island, and back to wander through the streets of town, looking at the few attractive college students from Bucknell, and John buys whipping cream and stamps and shops for furniture, and Topsy very obediently sits at our heels waiting for us to leave for home again. Back inside about 12:30 and lunch is ready, baked beans and tiny pieces of frankfurter, and then John goes to work and everyone vanishes, and when Alison starts pestering John I decide that I can play treasure hunt with her, so I invent a game where I give her clues in each next place to look and she loves it, jumping up and down in her eagerness to attract my attention. Then I shower and it's time for John and Jean Murphy for dinner, and they're both quite attractive and talk at the (awful scallop soup and raw beef roast, good salad, and my baba au rhum) dinner table centers around women's lib, and Tom and Kathy are really snapping at each other, and the kids are screaming for attention, and I thoroughly sympathize with anyone who has children who can't give them enough attention. They have to leave for some sort of peace meeting at 9, and we sit down to talk about Tom's problems at school which have completely changed his personality, causing John to make some remark about his sullenness which he overhears as he's working on the banister outside the bathroom. We talk about his plans and dreams, and the practicality of the questions asked by his dean, and the benefits of going to the provost or the president, and how the music department has to be different in that more individual work is done, and we touched again on Christine Elizabeth Powers, from Orange, Mass. on Gay Street, who sang in a cracked tenor, but answered the long distance phone, FUNNY!
DIARY 1837
SUNDAY, APRIL 4. To bed about 12:30 this morning, and up at 8:30, and play as quietly as possible, until I do John and he does me, only barely, because the kids are ricocheting down the hall, screaming, and I don't see how the parents can stand them. Tom has something to do in the office, so we have a breakfast of grits and sausage, not so bad, and walk over to Bucknell campus, and I sit and glance through music books as they talk, and we walk the long way back, seeing some nice numbers, and walk along the cruisy RR tracks and back home, and I don't feel like going in yet, so down to sit on the bank of the river, musing for about forty minutes, with Topsy demanding attention. Into the house and read the Times while John and Kathy talk about her problems with Tom, and then we have lunch of sandwiches left over from last night, apple juice, and spicy lemon tarts which the kids can't eat. Then I settle down again with the Times, not feeling like doing anything else, and Kathy reads her lesson book, Alison's playing outside, Becky's asleep, and John and Tom talk about his lack of self-respect, his need to do something, confide in someone, and that goes on until about 4, when Tom has a concert to attend, and again John and Kathy talk while I sit and play with Topsy and Esme, and then the kids come around, Tom comes back, we pack and say goodbye, pulling away about 5:30, and I can only say that I'm VERY happy to be seeing the last of the children. I drive until sundown, when we stop at a fruitless rest area, and then John takes over, through the dark and the awful traffic when 80 vanishes, to get to a closed Rendezvous at 8:30, and go next door to Hofbrau House, alone, for Hungarian goulash, dry, and a WET salad and good bread and sherbet, and we're out at 9:30, having paid $13 for lots of food, and I drive the rest of the way into town, rather panicking through the intricacies of the road into NYC, and John takes over in Manhattan, and we're to his place just at 11, and he waters the flowers and unpacks, and I shower and get into bed, and we sit and talk about the weekend, and he's been very happy to be away, even NOT thinking about his book for minutes at a time! Bigger bed feels great!
DIARY 1838
MONDAY, APRIL 5. John leaves at 8:30 and I read the Voice until 9:15, and then lug the suitcase into the still-crowded subway, getting a seat after a few stops, and get lots of mail, including a tiny note from Author Aid Associates, saying the book's not very good, and that's NOT worth $50, and I should have called BBB before sending these things off! Call Barbara Brimberg and she's on vacation this week, so I decide to send "Acid House" copies off to Lois Cohen and Don O'Shea, so I sit for a long time deciding what to say to them in their covering letters, and John gets here at 2:30, while I'm still eating lunch, and he wants to eat here tonight, so I take the Esme-haired trousers and lots of other stuff, including my old overcoat, out to the cleaners, go down for 6 more $1 stamps, pick up some meat and groceries, and get more envelopes for "Acid House" and more typing paper, which I keep running out of. Back and type up the envelopes for Don and Lois, and decide to write letters to Mom and Grandma while I'm at it, saving the letter to Rita for tomorrow, to thank her for the Buck Rogers book for my birthday which I looked through for about 2 hours after I got home this morning. Then it's time for dinner, and we have hamburger, as John wanted, and I shower and shave, and John decides it would be nice to see what I look like in a mustache, so I don't shave my upper lip. We'll see how long it takes. Out to the subway at 7:30 and I mail all the letters and we get to the Heights and I get up to Pope's for the second astrology course, and John Wilson makes things go slower with his hair-splitting, but the other John is even sexier in faded tight blue jeans, and even Arnie managed to stay awake through the whole thing until 10:30. Then over to leave an order for Don's book with him, and he gives me talk about the Japanese films at the Bijou, films at the Whitney and MMA and New School, and even gives me Wff 'n' Proof and "On-Sets" before I leave at 11:30, and John is a bit perturbed "I've been WAITING for you for an hour" when I get in, and I wash my face and crawl into bed, cuddling nicely with him, and I feel very close to him, but somehow sorry that he's so busy and I'm so free.
DIARY 1839
TUESDAY, APRIL 6. Play at 7 and Baby Magic each other into hysteria, nicely. John works at home and I call Arnie and say I don't want to go to any other museum during the day, since it's cloudy and rainy out, and leave at 9:45 for the Brooklyn Museum for the Van Gogh exhibit, and I have the idea it doesn't have much, but when I get home to check against the Stedtlikje catalog, they HAVE sent most of them, though I think there were others that WEREN'T in the catalog which were impressive. One fellow, then another, strike me with the faultless lines of their asses under tight blue denim, and I even talk with the older fellow at the cases outside, but he haughtily barely answers me, so I give him up and go home after seeing Van Gogh's personal collection on the second floor. Home just after noon and ravenously have breakfast, then read the Photography magazine that I bought for camera prices, having seen one in the subway. Then agonize about doing something, and get down to typing eight pages to catch up with the diary, then have lunch, and John comes in at 4:15, while I'm typing a letter to Rita, and he works while I work on the letter until about 8, when we have dinner, and then I'm back to write a letter to Paul and send a check to Plaut while John works until 10:30, and then I shave and fix the bed (for the first time since last THURSDAY, quite an airing), and suggest he smoke. We both do, using my new stuff that I crumble to order, and then I undress and sit on the floor at his feet, and I begin feeling him up and nuzzling his testicles, and I get rather high and start doing him, getting my hair all messed up in it and then getting my hair in my mouth, so that I feel that his cock is literally pushing a nest of my own hair down my throat, and I gag and feel almost like vomiting, and play and play with John until he loses patience around 11:30 and wets his own right first and jerks himself off, and then we wipe off and get into bed, where I feel the fluid dribbling from my cock and debate for a moment starting on myself, but I'm very tired and have gotten very high, and I go off on a slightly different tangent on the old "stoned-connection" trip (see next page) and drift off to sleep without really ever coming down FROM it.
DIARY 1841
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7. Up and cuddle nicely, John leaves at 8:10, I soak stamps. Then down for the mail and read that, though there isn't much to it, mainly a letter from Bill saying he's bought more stamps that I can buy part of at face value, and the book on Walker Evans that Arnie bought for Don at MMA last night, and I read that, and then read a bit of Buck Rogers before the stamps are dry, and then I sort them out and put them into the album, and decide to sort through the US used dupes and put them into strict order in the plastic containers, and that takes until 2, when I eat lunch, and again I don't feel like doing anything afterward, but I grab a hold of myself and shine my shoes, which badly needed doing, and even crumble a bit of the pot into the little container, and water the plants, and write two pages of the diary, and moan around the apartment wishing there were something I could DO. In the evening I call Joe (and Avi, who's got a date) to come over, but he's got a bit of a headache and doesn't want to, and I decide to exercise and take a shower, but then the phone distracts me, and I call Arnie and thank him for the book and ask him about the weekend, and then I turn on TV to watch the end of Julia Child and the start of "American Dream Machine" and then it's interrupted at 8:45 for the Nixon repetition of his nothing on troop withdrawal, and I watch the commentary, then something for the World Wildlife Fund, and watch Nureyev, Rex Harrison, Bob Hope, Englebert Humperdinck, and that's rather nice, and then sit through "Night Gallery" and John calls and we talk about why I'm not there, and I'm doing EXACTLY what I did before: making HIM ask ME every time I should go to HIS place, and assume he wants to come to my place without my asking him. He wants me to say something, and I'm involved in the TV program, and don't really feel like talking, and stumble around, feeling terribly stupid. Then I'm off the phone and watch TV until 11:30, and still don't feel like going to bed, so I'm back down to read more of Buck Rogers until my eyes won't focus and I'm nodding, and go into the bedroom and find that it's 1 am, and I have taken a shower, though I've exercised, and I haven't washed my hair since Sunday and it's dark and lank, and I fall into bed and to sleep, thankfully fast.
DIARY 1842
THURSDAY, APRIL 8. Wake at 9:15 and come with porno, disgustingly, and up to moon through another day, deciding to write a letter to Bill, and get out the album to see how many stamps he's going to renew with mint copies, and see the list of prices and literally get involved with that for over an hour, just resorting the numbers in my mind, and I'm getting more and more disgusted with myself. The heat's been off all morning, and I absolutely must wash my hair, and finally find that the water's warm in the sink, so I can do the dishes, and the water's also hot in the bathroom, so I take a shower and do my hair, finally, and don't exercise in the eagerness to shower and shave in preparation for John coming over at 6. Settle down to read magazines, two copies of New York, and try to stagger through the rest of Buck Rogers, but for some reason it's tough slogging, and I'm doing it more because I think I should than because I really want to. Call to get the theater schedule, and telephone to change my hair-cutting appointment to Tuesday, and somehow the time has passed and John comes in to shower, and we dress and leave to find that the Boulevard de Paris has closed and been replaced by a coffee shop, and we walk to the Escargot, but it seems expensive, and we end up at Joe's on 59th, and I go down to check entrée with Eddie, and it's OK, and we have sweetbreads and talk until 8, then down just after the beginning, regretting that we haven't smoked, and "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" is fairly interesting, but there are a lot of real down moments of terrible press-life, and his singing is stirring but not particularly attractive, and we're out at 10, with a groovy audience waiting to go in, and the sweet smell of pot in the air. Back home walking in the cool air, and I insist on seeing Tiffany's, and John harvests the pot, and I try to call Norma but she's not home, and we get to talking about the previous evening's mistake on my part, and John insists that I don't love him as much as he loves me, and we get into a long discussion (see following pages), and we end by cuddling, and he says "My cock likes you," and he reached for the Baby Magic and comes by rubbing, and I jerk myself off.
DIARY 1845
FRIDAY, APRIL 9. Wake early and he seems very horny, so I do him by 8 am. Then he leaves and I wander around the apartment until 9:45, reading Buck Rogers, when there's a ring from downstairs and it's Laird, passing between Lincoln Center and the Post Office, and he comes up and we talk about our trip, and his coming trip home in December, and my book failure and having to get a job, and he tells me about a friend of his who TEACHES programming, and I might be interested in that, and we get to talking about music, and I put the earphones on him and play the first sections of most of the Moody Blues records, and then we finish by listening to Ravi Shankar and he leaves just after 12, since his "Parsifal" performance starts at 1. Finish reading Buick Rogers (finally) and eat lunch, and decide that since the day is so beautiful I have to wash the windows, and try the extension washer when the kitchen window won't open, but that just doesn't work, and finally get to it with hammer and screwdriver, and the paint is actually still WET at the sides of the sill, and I'll probably have some trouble with it again, but no time could be as bad as this first time, when I get scratched and scraped against the sill and clamber over the stove to get to the right angles, and do the same sort of fuss with the bedroom window, and finally I'm finished, brilliantly, by 6. Shower and get the apartment vaguely fixed up and exercise, which feels easy since I've had so much exercise of a practical sort today, and take off for John's at 10, getting in at 10:40, and who comes along but Peter Ream and Allan Bettancourt, and we chat for a bit, and I suggest we ask them to the beach tomorrow, but they say they have shopping to do, and we walk to their place while John tells Peter about the trip and Allan tells me about his "mystical, new religion paintings" and they don't invite us up, and we get back to the apartment about 12, and chat some more while laying in bed, and I tell him about the rigidity that both Joe and I found in Peter, and we talk about the advantages of living together in the Heights -- and the impossible expense, too.
DIARY 1846
SATURDAY, APRIL 10. Wake late at 8 and have fabulous sex with Baby Magic until 9, and it's quite cloudy out, and Sunday seems to be a better day, but John says he just doesn't feel like working, so we leave about 9:30 for Jones Beach, getting there about 10:45, and we stop at the wind-blown snack shop to get some coffee and cake, and sit in the car because it's so cold, and then we walk along the dunes, thinking to stay rather close in, but John's following someone in white pants, and he goes out to the regular section and beyond, and then John's looking for a nice sheltered spot for the blanket, and we finally find it even past the old woods, just down the slope from someone who looks up appealingly as I take a leak, but later when I crawl up to the ridge to see what's passing on the beach, he looks up and is too old and puffed-face to be interesting. I finally take my clothes off and it's quite warm in the direct sun, sheltered from the strong wind, and people pass by and comment on us, one charming by saying "Peace" first to allay our suspicions of nude-bathing reporting. Read a bit of the book on Southeast Asia and the Village Voice, and then (we started at 11:30) about 1 the clouds form in unbroken phalanx, and at 1:15 we leave, finished for the day, and my neck is sore, partly from the shirt, partly from the sun. Drive the long way back, around the tip of Brooklyn, and pass Coney Island and John says he could be persuaded to stop, so we park for a dime at 3:30 and ride the breathtaking Cyclone for 75¢ and the windy shaking Wonder Wheel for 50¢, and by then we're so chilled we stop in Nathan's and have soup and hot chocolate and I have more food, silly, since we get to the car at 4:30 and get back to John's, shower, and go right out at 6:30 to Atlantic House to eat AGAIN. The shish kebab is rather dry, with only onion and two tiny pieces of green pepper to spice it up, but John loves his lamb curry, and we're out to wander along St. Marks Place looking at the fur, velvet, rug, clothing, smoking shops just to pass time, then to Anthology Film Archives at 9:30 for the 10-11:30 boredom of Stan Brakhage's "Songs 24-27," and the "River" (of clouds past a snowy peak), then to Eagle 11:30-12:30, and here.
DIARY 1851
SUNDAY, APRIL 11. Up at 8:30 to cuddle, but not come, and John's off to work at 9:15 and I watch "And David Wept" on TV with Aaron Osborne sexy, and read the Times more, taking time off for an awful lunch because I don't feel like fixing anything real, and don't have enough milk for soup to eat, but end up feeling terribly hungry, chewing on my fingernails (have to STOP that) because I don't have enough of the right kind of food, and then get to the puzzle simply because I don't feel like getting into anything else. Turn TV on at 4 to watch a boring epee championship at West Point, then switch to "The Further Perils of Laurel and Hardy," by that anthologizer Youngson, and watch the skating championships (see page 1847) until 6, and then turn TV off and shower and shave and leave at 7:30 to get down to the Eagle at 8 to meet John (also called for reservations for Wildmere), and we have beef curry and salad, look at the crowd which is poorer than last night (see previous pages 1848-1849), and then leave at 9:30 to search for Exile, and Jack, the good-looking long-haired blond who looks like an aging hooker with a dubiously beautiful-looking face and an air of surpassing stupidity, who cruised me, rather to my surprise, spoke up and asked us to drive him to the Triangle. I said we were looking for the Exile, and he said it was in the block SOUTH of the Tool Box, not north of it. We dropped him off and parked, to find the Exile not open until 10, and we wandered over to the trucks to pass the time after leaving the Tool Box after eating another dinner of good ribs and ham and sweet potatoes, and there was action in a squeaking truck, and I want in the back, stepping on shit, and was joined by a shortish bearded guy who rather reminded me to Tony LaGiglia, and we groped and rubbed crotches and kissed a bit, but he didn't get hard, then left, and I followed him, waiting for John, and we talked about his Pisces curse and his songs, and my Aries benefits and my novel, and John said it was too late to get to the Exile, so we chatted a bit and drove home at 11. John was smiley and relaxed, and he said "Two good meals and a good suck, I have every reason to be happy," and he kissed my chest and we slept.
DIARY 1852
MONDAY, APRIL 12. Wake brightly early and he does me with panting gusto. Then he lays quietly on me and I decide not to make the effort to hand him off, and he gets up and I get up, having decided not to stay the afternoon in Brooklyn, mainly because Bob Rosinek should be calling today to read "Acid House." Get home and shop for milk and cheese, have breakfast, down for almost no mail, settle down to catching up with typing eight pages, then fix up the apartment and Bob calls, saying he'll be here at 12. Do some little nothings and he does get here at 12, and we have a long conversation about pain lasting from the past vs. pain generated in the NOW due to CURRENT circumstances, all based on his reading of Janov's "Primal Scream." He has a doctor's appointment at 4:30, but leaves at 3:50, so I don't understand it. Then I have a big lunch because I assume I'm not going to eat before the astrology class this evening and leave at 7 to get to Arnie's to pick up some Consumer Reports on cameras and cassettes, and get over to Pope's at 8, and he goes into an explanation of the four elements of earth, air, fire, water, and how they relate, and Al turns me off by introducing all sorts of extraneous material. It goes on until 10:45, and again I get enthusiastic about the questions arising in my mind about how it's done and what SCIENTIFIC influence such things might have an undiscovered basis in. Assure him that I'd like the classes to continue, and he says he'll be finished with my chart next week, and would like to give it to me before the next get-together on the 26th. Norma picks up Arnie and me at 11, and drives us into Manhattan, and John again asks me to convince him that astrology works, and he admits to knowing about and utilizing his temperature variations and "feeling like working" emotions during each day, but refuses to extend his belief to variations over longer than a day. Talk ends when he says "I can't talk about it anymore," and when I ask "Angry?" he says "Frustrated because I can't talk about it," and I get frustrated at HIM because it's his CHOICE not to talk about it, rather than any OUTSIDE influence (including his book schedule) FORCING him into it.
DIARY 1
TUESDAY, APRIL 13. Up terribly tired at 8, make a NEW list (SHUDDER), and [and now I'm writing Tuesday, April 13, on Thursday, April 29, 16 days behind!] get started on Income Tax, which I have to finish by tomorrow, since the day after is the deadline. Get into it just in time to have to shave and shower and decide to take Norma either to the Playboy Club to use up more of the free tickets, or to Central Park, since it's about 60° out, and sunny, and when I get there at 12:30 she wants to stay outside, so we walk through a park overrun with pedestrians, get to the cafeteria to find it horribly crowded, and get a frankfurter for her and two hamburgers for me, and have to search for a long time for the sole salt shaker, and no napkins, and we leave quickly, walking slowly talking about her and Arnie's sex life (exclusive, surprisingly enough) and me and John's life, and watch sharply-muscled blacks playing Frisbee without their shirts, and then it's 2 and she has to be back to work, so I walk her to her door, past real and plastic flowers in front of the hotels, and I walk back to the Met for the exhibit of John Martin's etchings for "Paradise Lost," truly stupendous, but they don't have any reproductions of them, which is silly, and a loud flamenco troupe is occupying the Spanish courtyard, and I leave and walk back through the park, meeting Avi and talking with him, asking him over to read "Acid House," and then to the paperback shop to buy "Chariot of the Gods" and "The Primal Scream," which is on the list, and pick up "S is for Space" by Bradbury and "Deliverance," and get laundry and back home about 5. Eat dinner and next get out to 57th and 7th, reading "S is for Space" to wait from 7:30 to 8 in the cluttered back room of Paul McGregor, or whoever the haircutter is, and get washed and cut by a short muscled number who flips his wrist more than his scissors, and the English-accented girl critiques and flops and get out at 9:30, itchy because they didn't put a sheet over me, and it's too late to eat, so I get a sandwich and fruit cup at a deli, detour into Central Park to eat it, then subway to John's, where I wash my hair, we talk for a bit, and into bed rather early, but I'm not sure.
DIARY 1886
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14. Home from John's and settle down to read the rest of "S is for Space," and I still feel fresh for reading, so I choose "Chariot of the Gods" next, since it's so short, and finish that in time for lunch, and then I watch "The Unicorn, The Gorgon and the Manticore" on TV from a film from the National Arboretum in Washington by the Washington Ballet, and it's visually beautiful, in the trees and in the National Cathedral, and the music is sometimes witty, but on the whole it's a bore, and it's followed by a solo by that sexy dancer from Winnipeg, doing something about an old beggar who looks more like a young hippy. Then decide I have to get back to the Income Tax, and that takes the rest of the day, and I probably settle some other details, but since I'm not getting into a day which is still more than two weeks ago, I can't remember many of the details. I think I went out to check if the bookstore had Bradbury's "R is for Rocket," since I thought I had that, but it turned out I didn't, and it's the only one of his I need to complete my collection, but I don't want to make a big thing about it. Also, though I don't have it recorded, somewhere in here (or before this, and I may have told about it already), I tried to get another job in the census, since I'd worked 12 weeks, and thus needed only 8 more weeks of work to get 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, but when the last day passed without notification, I went down to the office and was told they had their quota of people from Manhattan, and I was out of luck. This was a blow, since I needed that job to get the 8 more weeks without too much trouble, and then sometime THIS week I got another letter from them about a Residential Finance Survey, and called them and was told to come down on next Tuesday for a test and interview, so there's still a chance, though it doesn't appear that the RF will last the full eight weeks. But every little bit helps. John comes in the evening and we eat and I decide not to listen to the TV programs I wanted to hear, and read while he works, and then maybe we have some nice sex in the evening, since I seem to be getting more used to it, but I really don't remember that, either.
DIARY 1887
THURSDAY, APRIL 15. Settle down into reading "Deliverance" after John leaves, and then Arnie calls to say that they're having a sale on the last four or five Uher tape decks, originally priced at something above $150, and now reduced to just $100 for clearance, and he says he's been very pleased with his, and wants to get a SECOND one. He said I could use his charge card if I wanted to, so I decided to get one. He came over at 11:30 and we talked too long, and were therefore late to the Donnell Library for the noon films, missing the first one, and they were a rather poor, unimaginative lot, except for something called "7362" by Patrick O'Neill, which was lovely in its clear bold coloration and smooth images, like a kaleidoscope of smooth body parts. The audience and projection were awful, as they usually are, and we left at two to subway down to the Cortland Street area, and we talked around Metro Electronics for about an hour, finally walking out with the two tape decks dangling from our sore fingers. Subway back home and take it out of the carton, move the lamp to the TV and everything else around to find room for it, and then plug the plugs into the wrong outlets before talking to Arnie, and he suggests I change them, and the full rich music comes pouring out, and I start playing "Tommy," since I bought tickets for the performance on next Tuesday. John decided to do some ushering for Dance Theater Workshop, so I finished the income tax, paying a nice little amount of money, very happy that I could reap the benefits from the stocks without having to pay enormous amounts of capital gains taxes, but then I'm sorry to see my holdings shrunk to about one-quarter of what they were when I decided to quit work. Start watching the Academy Awards, and John comes in, and I'd quickly showered and typed up the list of awards, and "Patton" seemed to run away with just about any nomination it got, including best picture and best actor, and so I didn't have any movies to add to my list because of the awards, thank goodness. Still haven't caught up with "Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" from last year. John's sleeping when I crawl in with him at 12:30, after the program.
DIARY 1888
FRIDAY, APRIL 16. Called Avi yesterday about coming over to read "Acid House," and he said he'd be over today. Since Bob Rosinek still hadn't returned HIS copy of "Acid House" (though he called me to tell me that it "read like it was written about 20 years ago, and if it were made into a move, it would PLAY like a movie made about 20 years ago, and the characters and situations really didn't come to life"), I was worried about what copy Avi would actually READ, but then yesterday Elaine sent her copy back, and that was fine. He came over about 11, questioned the phrases "first cycle" and "makes a scene" in the Synopsis, complained about the lack of capital letters for Nine Men's Morris and the Seven Sacraments, and particularly Heaven and God and Garden of Eden, and---most importantly, said that "I AM important" isn't properly led up to. I appreciate the things he said, but I'm busy over the stamps that Bill sent today, with many mint to fill in the used spaces in my American collection, and coupled with hundreds of FOREIGN stamps he'd bought from someone's collection, and I forget all about reading in the job of going through the catalog and album to find exactly how much Bill DID send me for the $8 and some cents that I sent HIM. Catalog everything, since he said he didn't make a list of what he sent me, and I'm sure he'll be curious to know how much it was. A badly mutilated Swiss stamp cataloging at $40 is particularly regrettable, but if it hadn't been mutilated, I'm sure I wouldn't have gotten it. The stamps take longer than I thought they would, and even though Avi and I sat around and talked about his therapy for a long while, he left to get something to eat for lunch about 3, and I continued with the stamps long into the evening. Then I ate dinner and prepared to get over to Glenn May's and Charles', and it's so late by the time I get out that I actually take a cab, and that whole incredible evening is written up (much after it happened, since the memory was so strong WHILE it was happening that I feared EVER being actually able to WRITE about it) in INTRODUCTION TO GLENN AND CHARLES, on DIARY 1877-1884. It's just before 3:30 AM before we tumble into bed!.
DIARY 1889
SATURDAY, APRIL 17. John got up to go to work, and I sat down to read the Village Voice which he left here, and there are so many things coming up that I want to see that I actually have to make a list of the things that I see in the VOICE, and one of them is a sale on Royal Scot bicycles at Stuyvesant for $45. A little later Arnie calls and says they rented bicycles at the Lincoln Center place, and they had some used ones for sale. Since I have lots of cash on hand, I decide to go up to see what they have, and after I finish the stamps, finally, from the last little bit of Philippines and Canal Zone that I'd forgotten about yesterday, I get out to the bicycle shop about 2, and decide I don't want a used bike, and the Royal Scot in the window is a super-strong and usually selling for $55, but he offers it to me for $50, with a year's guarantee, and since I'll be getting it FIXED up here, I might as well BUY it here, so I pay cash for it and ride home on MY OWN BICYCLE. Park in the hall until I can get the closet cleaned out and store it in there, and then call Joe Farinas, who doesn't have a bike, and Arnie back to say I have one, and then have lunch and Arnie and Norma are downstairs at 7 to pick me up for the first Krishnamurti lecture, and I take notes on it, finding him much older than his photographs, and I ask him a question about distractions that he answers very skillfully. Out at 7:10 and subway down to the Village to find Westbeth, finally, and get put to work on the manned elevator, and then in to watch the performance at 9, and it's over at 11, being rather boring except for the humor of Harold Silver in the last thing, and then we're all downstairs to a 4-foot hero, lots of wine, gallons of booze, dozens of cakes and pies, chips, some pot smoking, boring conversation with Bob Malchie, who seems to only think of HIS problems, and looking at humpy guys with handmade leather breeches of surpassing butchness, and a stiff Rudy Perez and Art Bauman and a flying-high John, and we finally root ourselves out of the party at 1, though John would like to stay longer and completely wreck his diet with even MORE cookies and soda and cake. Here to bed.
DIARY 1890
SUNDAY, APRIL 18. Try to call Cyndy all day, but there's no answer. Read the Times and go through all the want ads to cull out the headings which would have jobs in which I would be interested, and even cut out some ads which I might send away for, and feel that I'm doing something about getting a job at last, now that I've really convinced myself that even if "Acid House" DOES get published by some small paperback firm, finally it won't be the fantastic success I'd hoped it would be, and I'll have to get a job ANYWAY after I get back from the trip. Now that I've remade a list, there aren't so many things hanging over my head anymore, and I'd gradually come out of the depression I'd been feeling during the past few weeks about the literary demise of "Acid House." Read a bit of "The Primal Scream" after I finish the Times, doing the puzzle for the first time in a couple of weeks, and still try to call Cyndy, and then get down to Town Hall to search the crowd for her, but she's just not there. Even wait outside for Cyndy, but have to call her tomorrow to find that she hasn't gotten back from the islands, yet, and she finally stayed for three weeks! John and I go for a walk in Central Park, watching kite-flying, looking at the Earth Day Gay Baseball Game, enjoying the coolness and the breeze and the warmth of the sun, when it comes out, on the skin. John went down to usher for the last of the Dance Theater Workshop at Westbeth, and he wanted me to meet him there after Krishnamurti, and then we'd go to bars, but I didn't really feel like going to bars, so I told him to go without me. But Krishnamurti wasn't really very good, getting all confused with his questioners, and I got back to read more of "Primal Scream," but since I wasn't agreeing with it, it was rather a bore, and then John got back fairly early at 11, saying no one wanted to come around to the bars with him, so he just ended up eating there and then going to the trucks, where he had fun, and we sat around and talked a bit, and then went to bed. It's so DIFFICULT writing about a day over a week ago for which I have nothing written on my calendar. It looks like tomorrow will be absolutely impossible to do!
DIARY 1891
MONDAY, APRIL 19. John's up and to work, and I know I WANT to get things done from the list, and I INTEND to get things done from the list, but it might be that I have dishes to do, and clothes to wash, and one of these days I cleaned out the closet to put the bicycle into it, but the only thing I FINALLY remembered happened today was that Bob Rosinek called and wanted to go to some kind of movie, but I couldn't think of any I wanted to see with HIM that HE wanted to see (like "Tora, Tora, Tora" and "WUSA" which I wanted to see on 42nd Street, but tomorrow was the last day, and tomorrow I started working at the census bureau), and so I just asked him to come over. He brought over the copy of "Acid House" without saying anything else about it, and he even talked about paying for the pot he took with him the last time, and though we "agreed" that $10 sounded about right, he left without giving me anything, which isn't that BAD, but if he SAID he was going to pay, he SHOULD. We sit around and talk about "Primal Scream" and Krishnamurti for a long time, and then we're up to the roof with binoculars to look over the city, and then down into the park, which is quite a bit more empty than the previous day, and he says he's never been to the Ramble, so I show him the entrance over the bridge, the heights of the hills, which we climb, the open areas and cruising areas, and we end up liking the top of Belvedere Castle the best, and then he's hungry, but I've started on a diet again and am not eating dinner, so we go down to the boat dock and he buys a hotdog and we look at the boating, and then he leaves to walk home his way, and I'm back through the plaza to stand and watch many groovy guys playing Frisbee, and I'd love to do them all: hairy heads, dirty toes, flopping cocks, big muscles, and all! Home, meaning to exercise, but don't do it, only read a bit, meaning to catch up with the diary, but don't do it, meaning to go to a movie, but John feels not like doing anything. I put on "Tommy" and let him read the flyers so that he'll go tomorrow with more knowledge, and he's tired and gets into bed even before the tape is over, and I follow him in and we both fall asleep (typing happened Friday, April 23).
DIARY 1892
TUESDAY, APRIL 20. He's still working in the living room when I shower and shave, and say goodbye to him and get down to the census bureau at 10 am. Mr. Harlan loves talking to me, and I tell him all about programming, my travels, my quitting IBM twice to do what I wanted, my opinion that schools are mainly for keeping kids off the work force, and that programming in college would be fine for his son. Then out of the clear blue he asks if I want to work before the class next Wednesday, and I certainly DO! So he introduces me to Ruby Washington at 11:30, and she shows me how to telephone for the Hospital Services Classification Report, and I do that until lunch time at 1 pm, and she tells me how to get to the cafeteria on the sixth floor, and I'm out just after this black girl who says "Eatin?" and I say yes, remark about the elevator height, say I like the view, and wave her over to my table when I've sat down with my sweetish macaroni and beef, and she fills me in on the intelligence of Cullinana and the inanity of most other people, except him and her and me and Mrs. Washington. We talk for about an hour, firm friends already, and up to work again at 2, calling rather nicely through the rest of the day until 4:45, when I leave a few minutes early, because I want to do AT LEAST one of the things I started off to do today, namely, get my sandals measured at Allan Block's, and I do that, getting a fitting next Wednesday, relatively early for their backed-up schedule, and back home to eat dinner and get to "Tommy" to tell John about my day's work, and the music isn't changed much at all: only a few lines taken out, and a few other lines repeated a number of times. The first "Hip and Square" ballet would have been good had it STARTED when it ENDED, and John hated the obvious peace symbol at the end which held too long, but the people in the cast were beautiful, particularly one Russell Chambers, who is the sexiest guy on stage since Dennis Wayne a couple of years ago in the Central Park Dance Festival. The young hip crowd was kind of nice to look at, too, but everyone had dates. Back home to chat for a bit, listen to John sipping his sherry before sleep, and touch lightly.
DIARY 1893
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21. Write a couple pages, decide to see the first of the Langdon Festival at the Elgin, and THEN Mrs. Buckley calls at 12:30 to say I should come to the meeting if I want to, and I tell her I'd expected MORE advanced notice, because there are letters I want to write. She expresses regret, since she was assuming I was going all along, and I finished writing four letters to various agencies for part-time programmer work, and wrote to Gio about India, and talked to the gal who was representing the speakers in the NYU class tomorrow. So I'm finished with all that, and lunch, at 3:30, and get down to the Elgin just at 4, and "Hallelujah I'm a Tramp" (not BUM, as in the program) is starring Al Jolson and Frank Morgan, with Langdon as a bit-part street sweeper, and "Soldier Man" is somewhat better, though his jokes as a soldier left in Europe after peace were better than the ridiculous clowning with puke jars and drinking and soldiering when he became a look-alike king of some silly country. Also, sadly, the audience was completely turned off cruising, only terribly old fellows, though I noted with pleasure that they'd reupholstered the seats in red satin, and that the far light had burned out. Could have been great, but this evening was a total nothing. Out just before 6, when it was obvious how HIAT was going to go, with amnesia and all the awful tricks, and I'm out into a drizzle of rain that I wait out under a marquee, getting to the class at 6:15 to meet the instructor, and students file in and begin to ask questions, and by 6:30 there's a great meeting going, questions and answers flying, and then at 7 Norma Chu and Ruth Simpson come in, and then Ruth sort of monopolizes questions and answers, despite everyone's efforts to quiet her, and I leave at 7:30, and the instructor takes my name and number for "future reference," and I dash across to the subway and uptown for "Eugene Onegin" with Stripling as an incompetent Onegin, a too-skinny, immature Reyn, and a dark and brilliant duo of Cragun and Keil blazing up a storm. Home at 10:30 to faithful John, who seems to be staying at my place an AWFUL lot, and we chat about the day, and I have a couple of eggs in an omelet for dinner.
DIARY 1894
THURSDAY, APRIL 22. Back into work, since I'd said I couldn't work yesterday, but could on Thursday and Friday, and Courtney Chaplin introduces herself as the daughter of Charlie Chaplin, but from the poor side of the tracks. John said he'd meet me tonight, since he had some kind of business meeting at DTW to attend, and I was assuming he meant meet me HERE, but I had a few terrible moments, mainly because of my awareness that he's spending MANY nights here, and going back and forth to his apartment to change clothes, shave, and water his plants only, while I'm content to sit here and receive him in the evening and lose him to work in the morning. Work goes fairly well, and when I run out of hospitals, Ruby lets me call the schools, and when THAT runs out, I can finish the work that Mrs. Finkelstein (who looks, acts, and talks like a Mrs. Finkelstein) left behind her, and finally I even get some Retail Shop information which I don't do much of, but I get a good idea of the range of information asked of doctors, lawyers, shop owners, hospitals, etc, today. Leave just a few minutes early for the movie, and far from being the dud of yesterday, the movies today are a fantastic success sexually (see TRIPLETS AT THE ELGIN, DIARY 1858-1868), but the movies aren't very good, though better (they'd have to be) than yesterday: "Three's a Crowd" was terribly melodramatic, though the fire-stick, smokestack sequence in the shower was funny, "Boobs in the Woods" was funny mainly with his characterization of a bouncer in the wild-west cafe, with the funny string-trick-shooting sequence, and "Hooks and Jabs" had some ridiculous fight sequences, and I'm getting the idea that what happens to Harry is always so CONTRIVED that it's not believable, and is thus looked at only as INVENTION, not a performance. He finally directed "Three's a Crowd," but he doesn't come near being all-around skillful as Chaplin and Keaton in writing and directing. Leave at 9, and get all steamed up in the subway to write THE PRESSURE TO WRITE, THE CHANGE IS YOU, and PEOPLE IN THE SUBWAY (DIARY 1855-1857), and then John comes in, and I tell him about the adventures of the day, and we're to bed early again.
DIARY 1895
FRIDAY, APRIL 23. I try to finish the home-study for the class, but it'll take considerably more than the thirty minutes I have to spend on it between 8:15, when John leaves, and 8:45, when I have to eat breakfast and leave for work. Get to work and make some more telephone calls, including one to Susan Krenn in New Jersey, since I have the Army Telephone System to use without charge, and she definitely wants something other than a normal gay guy to talk about the gay FAMILY to her class, but I ask her to send me the cassette anyway. Yesterday we went outside to lunch in the restaurant across the street, but it was expensive and not terribly good for the price, so we went down to the cafeteria again at 1:15 and talked about women's lib and black lib and I told her I wasn't married because "I dug guys" and she took it as if she didn't even hear it, and that was the end of her talk about marriage. Out of work at 4:25 because there's nothing much to do, and subway up to the Elgin ("Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," with Joan Crawford, foot race and FABULOUS cliff-fence hang and picking peaches and lucky stars, UNSEEN. (See DIARY 1869-1876, LARRY AT THE ELGIN) and get out at 8:30, and back just in time for John to come in the door at 9, as agreed, since we were going to the Japanese movies, but he said he really didn't feel like going, and he undressed and slumped into the chair with a tired look, saying we might go for a walk later, but I looked at his tiredness and said "Why don't you just smoke, and then we can go to bed," and he smoked just a bit, getting lots of smoke in his lungs with his first big puff, and I got out the alpaca throw from Peru and started rubbing his body with it, and rubbed harder and harder, and he really enjoyed it (though THIS may have happened on Monday), and finally I got tired of rubbing him, and he seemed NOT to get the same sensation of contrast I got when I rubbed, rubbed, rubbed, than grabbed it firmly with a warm clammy hand, feeling the sensations very strongly, and finally I got tired working over him, and we went into the bedroom with the lights flashing, and he got out the Baby Magic and got me going too, and we both started rolling around (getting spots on the electric blanket, too) and both came with enormous gusto, and he fell asleep still stoned at 11.
DIARY 1896
SATURDAY, APRIL 24. Up in the morning feeling clammy from the evening, and John's off to work about 8:30, and I get down to typing finally, getting all of 25 pages written before I break for lunch, and in the meantime I'm trying to call Arnie to say that I decided NOT to see Krishnamurti on Sunday, and will be going out in the afternoon to the Langdon series, and won't be around when I think he's going to call, but I'd forgotten that he had early evening tickets to "Tommy" and wasn't going ANYWAY, which confused me no end. Decide the scheduling has to be quite precise, and leave here at 3, getting there at 3:15, since I have to leave AT LEAST at 5:15 to get to Krishnamurti in time, and it's the beginning of "The Strong Man," where Langdon is introduced as the son of the strong man in the funny cold scene in the hearse-like vehicle, and some of his dancing on the stage was feyly cute, and "Saturday Afternoon" was too horrid with his hard-faced wife, the attempts at fun with the two girls, and to make matters worse, the back row was crowded, but no one was very cute, and there were twosomes in the back who were doing it together, and I just didn't see anyone I liked, so it was just as well I didn't have time to see the thing twice. No action at all. Then the show as over at 4:55 and I could get to Town Hall at 5:10, watching people giving tickets away, and I asked my "Man and Man" question (see following pages), and got out at 7:10 and subwayed to John's, where we found that the Mexican place and Atlantic House were crowded, so we drove around to the refurbished place on Court Street, where I thought the Saba Glaba was superior, even without wine, and we were out at 9, dashing into the Bijou JUST at the start of "This Transient Life," which was arty, attractively peopled, and evocatively Japanese in black and white, and the frightening "Onibaba," a bit obvious, but the face-stuck-in-mask was really terrifying. Out at 2 am, not waiting to see "Chien Andolou" and "Freaks," and we walk home separately, I getting milk and eggs, he getting his laundry from the car, and we're to bed at 2:30.
DIARY 1899
SUNDAY, APRIL 25. John's up to work and I get to the good sections of the Times (being the magazine, the theater section, and when I want something to read in the john, the book section). He continued to work on the book, which is getting increasingly behind schedule as Judy takes more and more time away from her time with John to take care of her child-like husband, Igor, her demanding son, Jeremy, her spoiled dog, Tannhauser, her old house in Brooklyn which is giving way to the new house in Connecticut, which will take weeks of time in the moving, and then of course there'll be the problem of commuting afterwards. John's secretary is having all sorts of lesbianic problems at Dutton, and there seems to be more time spent talking and comparing characters than editing the book. Then he's annoyed about the final authors who haven't given him anything after repeated requests for articles, and then he hits an annoying series of sicknesses and malaises which make him upset and he turns to smoking before going to bed, which gives him the chance to exorcise his demons, but finally he admits to being about fifteen hours behind, and he gets more and more annoyed when I suggest things that we might do that he doesn't like, yet the specter of my "lack of enthusiasm" lurks over my refuting anything that HE suggests, and my bubbling over with glee when he suggests he might have a night free for anything. Even in spare moments he tends to think of the book, and we'll be walking in the park, or cuddling in the morning, and it will seem to me that he's quite otherwhere, thinking of the final details of the book, and even worse, worrying about whether he'll ever be able to finish it in time. I work on the home-study course for the residential Finance survey, finishing at 2:30, taking about 2 hours for what should have taken six and a half, and then I'm back to some of the papers, then shower and shave and get ready for the orgy at Don Stephens, at 135 West 22nd St., and John wraps a few joints from my stuff, since he thinks Don doesn't like smoking in his place, and we take off at 3:45 for an entire Long Day's Orgy into Night (see following pages), finally getting exhausted to his place at 12.
DIARY 1915
MONDAY, APRIL 26. Subway from John's to the office, where Courtney keeps messing up my telephone conversations with her cold hands on my warm neck, and everyone couldn't help but notice what was going on between us, but I had the feeling she was the office's bete noire in about three different ways, and anything she did would be suspect and ostentatiously ignored. I finished up what I could of the doctors, dentists, lawyers, hospitals, schools from my stack and from the woman's stack, and even got into a few of the more lengthy retail stores' surveys, but by 4:15 I'd decided I'd had enough, and I checked with Ruby, who said that I wouldn't be coming back to work after class, and I certainly hoped that it was because the survey for Residential Finance would start right after class, rather than because they didn't want me to work there. Subwayed to the Elgin, where I have a solitary fling (see next page), and consequently I miss "There He Goes" and "Feet of Mud," though I seemed to remember a very old print of some old shoe-salesman jokes which looked older than Edison's first ones. "The Chaser" was another example of his terrible exaggeration of plot and coincidence, with him supposed to have been killed, dating other girls, and having a terrible harridan of a wife and mother-in-law. Get out at 6:15, not waiting to see whatever shot they had with the young Jack Benny, and got home to find I didn't have time to shower, but figured I'd do it at John's after the astrology class, so I eat quickly and subway to Pope's, where he has the chart of Ann Jensen, the spiritualist, on the wall, and proceeds to show how her chart predicts how psychic she'd be, but also how foxy and opportunistic she could be, also. Then Tiko exclaims "That's just what I THOUGHT she'd look like" when Pope brings out a photo of her portrait. "That's just what I thought," must be the easiest thing in the world to say. Ends about 10, and Arnie comes over to say I should meet his sister, but I call John and he's through with his work, saying he's going to take a walk when he thinks I'm in Manhattan, so I leave, and we go out for a walk to buy mead for Lake Minnewaska, detour to the Promenade for a bit, and then get back to his place about 11 to undress and crawl into bed to sleep.
DIARY 1017
TUESDAY, APRIL 27. Home from John's determined to get some work done, and immediately start on the letters to Theron Raines and Sidney Porcelain for "Acid House." That gets done in due time and I put them into their envelopes, lovingly scotch-taping them shut, hoping to light onto some sort of mesmerizing ritual that will at last break the spell of rejections and let someone see how GREAT the book IS. Mail it and bring up the mail, going through Life magazine and other things, and one of these days, so it might as well be this one, John had been looking through "Ulysses," and the book was lying out on the bookcase, and I picked it up idly and commenced reading all the parts I'd underlined, which were considerable, so it took me a great deal of time which was essentially wasted. I knew the diary was falling far behind, but I just couldn't get up the energy to work on it. Do other things of no note during the day, and then meet John for the first ballet he sees by the fabulous Stuttgart company: "Carmen." The overture is ominously awful, and the curtain rises on a cavernous set notable only for its darkness, and then Carmen, ludicrous in the WAY she stands out from everyone else, comes dancing in, acting to the hilt, and Don Jose acts to the hilt, and the knife carving a cross in the back of the mistress is nice, and the set looks great between the scenes, since the dimness makes it truly look like a cave, and then the music keeps getting worse and worse, John even leaping into sarcastic applause with the rest of the audience: "A TUNE, a TUNE!" and I'm disgusted with him and the audience and the dancing, and Haydee and Madsen and even Cragun are off their style, and the percussion-type "flamenco-brilliance" is stultifying rather than exciting. The last act bullring backdrop was brilliantly romantic in a sort of Turner way, and the acting was uniformly good, and I was glad I didn't have to watch without binoculars, as John did, and he loudly booed Cranko when he came onstage, and Haydee took her curtain calls with a rather frozen smile under her wide-open eyes. Met Marvin and a friend and he even LIKED it. Home disgusted with the whole thing, and bed.
DIARY 1918
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28. I'm actually out of the apartment before John to get to class on time at 8:30, and he says he can't get used to me bustling around, up even before HE is. Down to class a bit late and there's only one person in the room, and a few more women file in, and they're rather business-like types who turn out to be Senior Interviewers, and there are familiar faces like Barbara Robinson and someone Hundley, who was a supervisor for CES, and others have had positions of authority, and Mr. Harlan himself is teaching the class. Then two sexy fellows from Brooklyn College wander in, and I sit next to the nicest crotch in the room, belonging to Arthur Linowitz, but the eyes of his friend, gray and large and steady, are the best feature between the two of them. The class is snappy, everyone can read, and it's rather uplifting to be among people I could vaguely consider as equals. Dash upstairs during coffee break to fill out a payroll form for Ruby, and Courtney finds me and asks to meet for lunch, and class goes quickly and amusingly, then lunch in the cafeteria, when I have the diet tuna fish again, and back to class, which is over about 3, and I find I have 16 buildings with "Owner not Identified" in a local section right around me. Fine. Discuss that "12 a week" should be pretty good, and get a census hand-carrier for great show, and then subway to Allan Block's for a fitting of my sandals, then home to have dinner and talk to a John Connolly who says he couldn't possibly join us for the Tsi-Dun this evening (see following pages) because he'd be turned off, as he was at the Continental Baths earlier in the week, by the first person who would say "No" to him, or if he weren't completely the center of attraction. I observe that it sounds as if he hadn't grown up yet, not to mention having trouble maintaining an erection, but I couldn't be explicit because he's always so paranoid about talking over the phone. He said I had inklings of the truth, but that we'd have to talk about it some other time, but he WOULD like to be invited over to see slides sometime. It's raining, and John and I catch a bus to First and 57th, then get home about midnight.
DIARY 1923
THURSDAY, APRIL 29. Wake and talk for a bit about the night before, then he leaves for work and I FINALLY get down to typing ten pages of the diary, writing down what happened 16 through 6 days ago, agonizing at how much I'd forgotten, cursing myself for getting so far behind (and I feel the same now, since I'm STILL 9 days behind, despite all the typing I've been doing recently---but then there's been a lot DOING recently). Then to the noon films at Donnell with Arnie, "Symmetry" beautiful; "Perfection of Matter" simply awful; "Pair of Paradoxes" fun with the Escher stairs which go up forever and a tone that goes up forever too; "Universe" which is now dated, being made in 1960, and far outmoded by men landing on the moon and by "2001;" "Notes on a Triangle," by Rene Jodoin, absolutely brilliantly done; "Worlds of Dr. Vishniac," which managed to be a bore; and "Beginning of Life," which was also rather poorly done, despite all the fetuses. Then I told Arnie about the "Changes" for the TV screen, and we buy one at the Museum shop for his discount, coming to $9.50, and get home to watch it, playing around with it, and then we talk for a bit, and I bring up the mail, which startlingly has a return from Theron Raines, sent only two days ago, and a return from Random House, sadly, and I sent it out to Lyle Stuart and Ballantine Books with the last of my envelopes and $1 stamps. Then I have dinner and shower and talk to John about coming to his place at 10 pm, when he'll be finished with his work, and call Pope to say I'll be a bit late, and get there at 8:15 and he's put off by the cassette recorder (though I really think he's put off by ME, doesn't want to offend me, is attracted to me [as he's attracted to his current friend, who he says with trite exasperation is ALSO an Aries] and doesn't even want to admit it to HIMSELF) and talks on and on about my traits, and then Arnie comes over to borrow some milk for his sister, says hello, and I have to leave at 10, Pope insisting he's sorry for being so "off" tonight, and he'll just have to talk to me again about it. I get to John's, and we talk about my reading, he reads it, and we get to sleep about midnight.
DIARY 1924
FRIDAY, APRIL 30. Home in the showering rain, and again today the weather is too cruddy, and I have a bit of a cold coming, though I can't decide how much might be a sore throat from Sunday's do of Bob Broadway, and how much I successfully fought it with massive doses of vitamin C so that I'd be healthy for Wednesday's Tsi-Dun and this weekend at Lake Minnewaska, so I decide to postpone again going out on the census job, though I do take about an hour to get all the addresses in order and make out a little map of where I have to go, and it settles into a nice pattern which should take me relatively little time to do. Then type four pages of diary, getting up to the party on Sunday, but I just don't feel like doing anything more on it, and I also have to see "Samurai, Part I" today, and then I get involved in going through the Academy Awards book to see how many foreign award films I missed, and it turns out to be very few (though when I checked it later, it turned out I hadn't seen "La Strada" or "Henry V" at a time when I was recording my movies, so I'll have to see them again to record them, and since I must have seen them AT THE LATEST in 1957, it's got to be AT LEAST 14 years ago, and I'm a different person now from what I was then). Then out to the movie from 3:15 (but it doesn't start until 3:26) to 5, and Mifune is certainly young and virile, but I don't get the idea YET (which I do at the final version) that it's essentially the story of HOMOSEXUAL, not heterosexual, love. John comes in and we have steak for dinner, and then off to the Stuttgart for a funny "Brouillards" with almost everyone in the company, "Ebony Concerto" with great costumes and good hammy comic acting, but not really a good piece: "slight" as Barnes put it; "Opus One," which I like somewhat better on seeing it the second time, and "The Seasons," which, even though we're in the next to the last row and very far on the side, is still brilliantly Bolshoi, and I'm delighted with it, and even John is beginning to see that Cranko is a good choreographer. I'd packed as quickly as I could, rushed the suitcase downstairs before the show, and we dropped by afterwards (see next page) to get it.
DIARY 1926
SATURDAY, MAY 1. The alarm rings at 7 and we lounge in bed until 8, then we're up and John starts packing while I look at the Voice, and when we're crossing the bridge, John asks what time it is and it's 9:30. We're up the West Side Highway to the Palisades Parkway, and the clear morning is gradually getting more and more cloudy, though the day is still bright and the excessively yellowish-green of the willows, new-leaved, are bright against the dullness of the wintry gray-green. I take over driving for a bit, and then we stop for groceries for a cook-out lunch just outside New Paltz, and we look around for the nude swimming place as described by Arnie, and decide to get to the hotel and check in to see where the picnic area is. At the hotel the Presbyterians are just checking out, and a dour looking bunch THEY are. He directs us to park our car just inside the gatehouse and walk down the path to the falls, and we do so, finding an 80-foot drop sheer in a nice setting to be very pleasant, and we gathered small sticks and made a fire between two rocks and broiled our hamburgers and ate our oranges and English muffins as children and dogs continually nosed the fire. It got more and more cloudy, and we decided to walk down the stream to see what went on further down, and we came finally to the parking area we'd seen before, crossed the road and looked at the dam, then down along the streambed through the thick forest where there were numerous kids walking back and forth, and we parted ways, John going back to the dam, I going down to the burned and snow-collapsed powerhouse, and up the other side, watching the kids lolling around beside another falls, drinking wine chilled in the stream, and we figured THAT was the place for the nude swimming. Walk back up the road, knapsack and broiler getting heavy and cumbersome in our hands, and into the car and check into the hotel. Up to our rooms to be saddened by square peeling pallid wallpaper, a shared bathroom that we made private by locking the other door, a smell of damp and rot, a chill on the carpet and in the air, and unsatisfactory beds that sank under our every movement (see following pages). Bed at 11:30.
DIARY 1931
SUNDAY, MAY 2. I'm up at 7, but John sleeps until 8, and then we have time only for getting down to the awful breakfast (see preceding pages), and then walk around the lake, pack, out to the car and down for Pandit Prana (see following pages). We left there about 6:30, and then John used his driver's intuition to get us onto the right road for the Verrazanno Bridge, and I was saying that we could go see the only Harry Langdon film I hadn't seen, but then it burst in on me that I had the tickets for Feld with me for tonight, and I hadn't even reminded myself or John about them. We drove rather faster over the bridge and along the parkways, getting off on Atlantic Avenue at 7:05, and John decided he was worried enough about the car being broken into that we could stop at the house, and he saw the two house-owners from across the street and talked with them, trying to see about someone to sublet his apartment for the vacation, and I carried all the junk upstairs. Then down, got the tickets out of the suitcase, and carried the suitcases upstairs, and down again, quite tired, and feeling my cold still with me, and into the car to drive to the Brooklyn Academy, getting there at 7:25, and upstairs to find ourselves in an almost completely empty balcony. We moved down to the third row as the lights dimmed for "Harbinger," and it was the first time John saw it and he rather liked it. Then we were downstairs to sit, and out to the lobby where he talked with John Moore, who waved hello to me, and we saw the new productions of "The Gods Amused," which wasn't terribly amusing, and the music was non-eventful, and "Romance" which went on entirely too long with entirely too little dancing, with the girls in slippers rather than in toe shoes, after the still-gripping production of "The Maids," which is one of the better things the company does. Since the evening was so unsatisfactory, I'm just as glad there was no one in the audience, and I'm hoping Clive Barnes rethinks his undying support of Feld. Drive back and feel hungry, so John lets me off to get two souvlaki sandwiches, I meet Romy, who doesn't remember me, we eat and get into bed, tired from the weekend.
DIARY 1934
MONDAY, MAY 3. Lug my suitcase back into town, and down to the basement to root around for sections of Sunday's Times, not managing to find the news, the sports, or the magazine section, but the entertainment section had lots of things to see, and I clipped out many pieces, realizing that I had to see a movie every day Monday through Thursday if I was going to see all I wanted to. Completely flipped out to find that the two books I'd sent out on Thursday, to Lyle Stuart and Ballantine Books, both came back this morning, and I made a list of groceries and stamps and envelopes I had to get, phoned "Samurai, Part II" for the schedule, and got out at 2 to watch it, having read the Times and eaten my lunch and breakfast in the meantime. There was a short about a certain kind of pottery, and the movie was only one hour and 45 minutes, which implies that they COULD show all three parts at once if they really wanted to. Out to buy stamps and groceries and envelopes, and fix the apartment up a bit by putting away the luggage when Liz Hock comes in at 5:30, and it turns out she works for Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, and I show her the envelope in the typewriter on which I was just going to type that name, and she recommends that I send it to David McKay, which I intend to, since the woman sounds good, and then she recommends that I write to her friend Shirley for a freelance copy-editing job at Harcourt, and she's waiting to find if she's accepted at Ski magazine before she can tell me whether she wants to sublet my apartment for 4 months, even though it'll be rough getting all her furniture and books into my apartment with all MY stuff there. We talk until almost 7:30, and she realizes she's keeping me, and I shove down a can of tuna fish and subway to Pope's for another astrology class, this one a dud because only Art and Tiko and Al and I are there, and John and Lee come late, and have to be filled in again and again on Zelda Fitzgerald's chart, and Pope knew and talked with her, and there was too much emphasis on HER, and on extraneous subjects, and I was disgusted when I left at 10:15, suggesting questions for next class, and got to John's. We chatted, and I didn't tell him about "Samurai" which wasn't very good.
DIARY 1
TUESDAY, MAY 4. Stop by at Arnie's at 9, while John works at home, to get his cassette recorder, because Susan Kress wants her tape by May 10, and it's a good thing I do, because she calls this afternoon and says she really needs it by Saturday, since her class is Monday, so I have to do it tomorrow. Arnie also comes up with another surprise: an almost complete set of Famous Americans, mint though most are hinged or damaged on the back, lacking only the last set and one of the 10¢ ones, plus a mint Russian stamp and a block of four Idaho Statehood that disintegrate when I take them out of the envelope, for a total catalog value of $10, which is more than the ballet tickets I gave him. It pays. Talk with him until about 11:30, when he wants to go downtown, and I subway home to figure that even if it IS raining, I have to get out and start working on the Residential Finance survey, so I get out just before 11:30, taking the circle up Central Park West to 64th, and up to 74th, getting only one complete response and many names and addresses, and finding that it goes quite quickly. Pass the Embassy, and though I've checked with Arnie that the same double feature is supposed to come to the Guild this week, I really don't feel like working much more, so at 1:30 I circle back and get in for the end of "Tristana" and see "Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion," and it's skillfully done, because I hate the guy, but he's really such a STUPID fellow that I can't get interested in it, and the "Tristana" is also rather pointless (how MANY people have to get their leg amputated because of a tumor?), and I got out fairly close to six, since they also have an insipid English travelogue. John's here already, and we sit down to dinner and get to the Metropolitan at 7:45 for the "Taming of the Shrew," and he cheers for the fabulous ballet, and the lady behind beams when she remarks that he hadn't booed this time, and he says very nice things about Cranko's choreography and about the music and the dancing, and he even surprises me when he says he figures he'll go to the "Romeo and Juliet." Back early at 10:30, so we smoke to watch "Changes" (see next page).
DIARY 1937
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5. Up quite exhausted from last night, John leaves, and I type six pages which doesn't even begin to cover Don Stephen's party, and then go down for the mail which turns up an urgent request to call the office, and I find that the IMPLICATION is (though the fact might be different, and they're only trying psychological warfare against their poor workers) that I'm the only one who hadn't sent in their completed tasks, and I offer excuses and he gives me many addresses and phone numbers which I couldn't get (and why couldn't they be given WITH the forms?), and I say I'll find it easier in tough Manhattan if I can tell them I can get their addresses ANYWAY. Then I just have to get to taping the information for Susan Krenn, and I shuffle through old WSDG notes and the Mattachine news, and get some few bits of information for her, organize my thoughts, and sit down with the tape recorder (this is after calling Arnie when the plug wouldn't fit into the socket, and he thinks he's forgotten an adapter for the machine, so we're out to buy batteries, and it works after that, but it just means that I start at 1 to record). Decide I really only have enough for one side, or 30 minutes, and encourage her to ask questions on the other side, as I'm not used to a monologue. Finish that and take it to be mailed in the same mailer she sent to me, and the subway down to (see next page) "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man," which has a funnier Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy than it has a W.C. Fields, and "Man on the Flying Trapeze," which is a very poor print, though he uncharacteristically lashes out at his free-loading uncle, played brilliantly by Brady Sutton, and even his mother-in-law, but the first "burglar in the basement" bit was terribly overdone, meaning overlong. Home at 6 and John's here later after class, and I catalog and put the stamps from Arnie into the album, not even getting to much writing, though I'm desperate to catch up. Also sort through all the junk in the drawers, only resorting anything, not really doing anything except condensing all the things I have to do. To bed with a cuddly John, and I think he wants sex, but I'm too tired to give it to him.
DIARY 1939
THURSDAY, MAY 6. Both quite hard on arising, and I do him with enormous satisfaction for both of us, and he's even out of bed at 8:10, and when I apologize, he only gives me his extremely pleased grin, and I figure it all worked out all right. Even though it's showering again, I decide I have to go out, and I'm stupid enough to wear my regular shoes which have holes in the soles, and I'm soaked through soon after I leave at 8:45. Work up the other direction to do the ones I hadn't started yet, and get a few good responses, and have fun with Sanchez, who doesn't answer the door, but answers her phone, and I try Joe, but he's not home, and I work until 11:30, doing all I can, and decide I can make it to the noon movies at Donnell, and get there just at noon to see Norma there, but Arnie doesn't show up, and we watch the Saul Bass "Why Man Creates," which has a few good things, but it's not really great, and "Genesis" is cute about the making of a man which seems to point out the RIDICULOUSNESS of the mechanistic view of the universe: if you think the eye is CHANCE, you're out of your MIND. José de Creeft film was awful, "The Dot and the Line" was mildly amusing, and "Dancer's World" was good ONLY as a 1957 record of Graham's company, with a beautifully sexy Bertram Ross still in fine body. Leave just before 2 and search through the dirty book stores to see nothing really new, and an awful crowd of ugly buyers, and then up to the Elgin to hassle about getting in with my $1 ticket (thank goodness I have only one left), and then they have no popcorn, and it turns out that "Samurai, Part III" is REALLY about the love affair between Sasaki and Musashi, and when Sasaki draws blood from Musashi's head (rapes him?) he falls dead in utter ecstasy, giving his lover all he can: his victory and his life. Out at 4, so the whole film is only 5 hours long, and home to ravenously eat some raison toast and peanut butter to stave off my hunger, then wash my hair and subway over to the wrong address for the Eristoff residence on E. 93rd, and John is already there, the food is great, she lends us two books, and we leave, very tired, at 11, and get to his place to fall exhausted into bed.
DIARY 1940
FRIDAY, MAY 7. Check out 16 Court Street for Unique Restorations, and find a name that I can get a phone number for, and get home at 9:30 to call a number of people, then call Mr. Harlan to say I can't work so few hours much longer, and I need more work, so he asks me to come down to the office on Monday for more work. Call a few more people and get down to typing in the intermissions, finally getting through with thirteen pages through the day, which barely gets me to the middle of last week, and then John Connolly calls from the corner at 11:30, and comes up to begin to talk about Grover Loening, who's 82, lives next to Nixon on Key Biscayne, has patents for the amphibian's step, the retractable wheel, worked for the Wright Brothers, and was Air Advisor to every president from Hoover through Johnson, who wants a hairless slim hustler for the evening, and I call John and Azak (who's in England) and they can't help, and then I take the time to go back up to Goldsmith's for a half-hour conversation and the ready-made completed form, and I'm back downtown to see Mike Rosner eating with his cousin, Nico Castel from the New York City Opera (and the Met, as he told me the following day), who's in for a ten-day vacation from the West Coast, and he'd looked up my number and address to call me that very day. Home at 2 and continue typing, and John C. comes over at 3, and I think of Don Stephens, and they make arrangements through him, and he tells me about his childhood (see following pages) and his sexual hang-ups, and then says he's dying for sex, and I say "Why didn't you say so," so we draw the drapes, get out my magazines and slides, and we each pull our own putzes in time with each other and the slide show, and I think he's greatly bodied, and I come all over the place since I hadn't come since last Saturday at Minnewaska, I guess! He leaves, thankful, wanting to come back, at 6:30, and I fix up the apartment and wash dishes in preparation for John getting here at 8, and in the meantime read his Dutton paperback that he gave me yesterday on "Science-Fiction Films," great fun, and we eat and talk about the Minnewaska fiasco, he works while I type, I vibrate him (as I had done John C. earlier), and we go very peaceably to bed at 11:30.
DIARY 1943
SATURDAY, MAY 8. HE does ME in a fabulously slow and sure way this morning, then gets off to work while I set down to the DIARY pages with determination, interrupted at 11 when Mike Rosner calls and talks for an entire hour, and I have to put him off by saying I'm busy this weekend, and the next time I could possibly see him is at 5:30 Monday, when we'd eat dinner and go to the astrology class. Then return to typing to have the phone ring just a few minutes later, and it's Cyndy, saying that she's again thinking of moving from New York, and she only talks until 12:30, saying we have to get together next week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday. Back to type page after page, having the satisfaction of coming closer and closer to date, and then at 3 I phone John to see if he's still there, having survived the burning of the top floors of Max's Kansas City next door, and that since it's been raining VERY hard ALL day, I didn't think I'd be riding my bike to his place this afternoon, and then get back to finish typing up to today, finally, doing a total of 25 pages, and I just have time to shower and wash my hair and shave and leave for John's at 5:15, and the subways are slow so I get there just at 6, and he's still in the tub, so we leave at 6:15 to search for the Lil Bo Pig restaurant which is supposed to be at 30 Joralemon, but it's abandoned, and we walk back in the rain to the Mexican restaurant, not quite so tasty as I remember, and to the ice cream place for a cone for dessert, then to the Academy for Feld. Bruce Mark's "Clockwise" is reasonably interesting, and John likes it a lot, but "A Poem Forgotten" is dreadfully obscure, rather reminding me of the much better "Monument to a Dead Boy," "Romance" is better, knowing that nothing's going to happen and that it's going to take forever in which to happen, I can settle down to enjoy the dance, and I did, concentrating on the very sexy-looking Kenneth Hughes. "Theatre" I didn't care for, with the exaggerated Commedia Dell'Arte vein, but John liked it. Back to John's at 10:15, he smokes, gets out the chains, I rattle about with him, finally doing him with saliva that won't slime because of the metal, bed at 11:30.
DIARY 1944
SUNDAY, MAY 9. Wake lazily at 8:45, latest in a long time, and John's up to work and I concentrate on the Times, not finding much to read, and we eat hamburgers about noon, and I get back into the "Primal Scream" and about 1:40 we leave for the Bleecker Street Cinema for "Chant d'Amour," quite explicitly sexy for being made (silent) in 1950, and John and I initiate activity in the back row, he having a guy who then comes over to me with his small cock, excites me (with the flick) until finally HE gets hard and comes all over my hand, and then he leaves, and "Johnny Minotaur" is self-consciously arty and teasy, though there are some lovely body shots and some nice jerking-off scenes which last too short a time, and there are entirely too many females and fat males and ugly people around, and concentrated on, since it's obvious he KNOWS who's beautiful and what the audience wants to see, and it's NOT his stand-in or his niece. Flirt with some fellow who's cute but WON'T come sit next to me, even when I take it out and jerk if off for him, and we leave at 4:30, looking for a money belt for John for the trip, and look into the new gay bookshop across from the Theater de Lys, but it's not very good, but the Guild Book Shop has a great catalog of Tom drawings, and I buy 4 for $3, and John likes them. Down to the newly-created pleasant dockside park at the foot of Christopher, and walk up to Westbank to eat, and they can't open the kitchen until 6, the liver they bring me at 6:30 is rotten and sour, and I finally wolf down the hamburger they bring me (with free salad and wine and they didn't charge me for soup, either) at 7, and we taxi up to City Center where they can only find us seats WAY on the side in the orchestra, and "Blues Suite" impresses for the LOVELY bodies of the males, then "Cry" overwhelms with Judith Jamison, "Gloriana" made into "Choral Dances" isn't very good, and "Revelations" sets the audience clapping and singing and "That's som'thin' els'ing" and they do an encore and we're out, tired at 10:30. To my place to look again at the pictures, and John puts his "cock resonator" on me, then Magic's me up and I come, and I do him, and we're even more exhausted to sleep at 11:30.
DIARY 1945
MONDAY, MAY 10. Loaf together from 7:30 to 8, he's out at 8:30, and I continue numbering all the pages in the "second cycle" at 1000-1944, which is THIS PAGE NOW AT 9:55 am!!! Then get down to calling some of the survey people I was supposed to have called this morning, and get a few more surveys done, so that by the time I leave for the office at 11:30, I have seven completed in 26 hours, not counting the time I put in today. Someone from Brooklyn says things go easy for him except for travel, but that there isn't much new work, though Harlan comes through with ten new ones for me, saying that he understands that I'm working hard, but am limited because of the hassle of owners and the need to call back and call back. Courtney's flitting around, and we go to lunch after waiting about 15 minutes on her bank line, talking about the general unpleasantness of bank lines. Tuna fish lunch sparked by an enormous piece of delicious chocolate cake, and I'm off at 1 down Reade Street, and pass the Fire-Fighting Museum, which I'd heard about but never seen, so I went in for about 20 minutes, but there's nothing much in the line of spectacularly burning buildings, mainly old photos of old, unsexy, firefighting classes and old machines and some nice models of old equipment. To the Elgin just at 1:50, a little late for the start of "Tillie and Gus," and Alison Skipworth and W.C. Fields made a great team, sort of an early Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler, and the boat race was fun with the models, and "My Little Chickadee" always surprises by HIM saying "Come up and see me sometime" and SHE saying "My Little Chickadee." (See next page.) Out at 4:30 and home at 5, just when Mike Rosner arrives, and we talk and go down to Athenian to eat, and subway down to 14th before I discovered I'd forgotten my astrology charts under the table, subway and run back, and we're there at 8:15, but ONLY John is there, Al shows up later, and Tiko and Lee come in about 9, and Pope announced that this will be the last class, because he just doesn't have the time. We sit around chatting when Arnie says that his visiting Russians are too tired for more guests, and we go to his place for coffee and Sara Lee chocolate cake for me, and we smoke (see following pages), and I'm dizzy to John's and to bed at 11:30.
DIARY 1949
TUESDAY, MAY 11. I'm anxious to get home to work, since today will be sunny and tomorrow and the next day rainy, but BEFORE that John puts his cock resonator on himself with grimaces while he snaps it shut, and gets out the Baby Magic and we play with each other for a long period of time, until I can't stand the play anymore, and I start jerking myself off, and he kneels above my head while I suck his balls and jerks off onto me with a heavy odorous spray, and I come from an almost-soft cock, bubbling over myself, and we wipe off and get ready for the day. I'm home at 9, carrying John's coffee mug and my astrology notes, and I go right to the supermarket to buy meat for tonight, and wine, and put on tapes to pass the day, telephoning people in the morning from 10-11, go through the list of films coming to the Elgin during their summer festival, telephone the Bijou for their schedule, don't eat lunch because of the telephone calls, and then out at 1:30 to the Bijou for the end of "Onibaba," good again, and Yukio Mishima's "Rite of Love and Death," on a bastardized Noh stage with Wagner's "Liebestod" orchestrally in the background, written subtitles of a quaint crudeness, and Reiko, Yasumoto's lover, is pretty and piquant, and for the longest time we don't see Mishima's eyes, and then we see ONLY his eyes, and the nude scenes are rather sexless, and his body is nice, but not terribly well photographed (and it seems to be 16 mm film, anyway), and the death scenes ARE bloody, with cuts to blood spurting, intestines slipping out, gushes of blood on the floor and wall, and a final knife through the neck that's uggy. She dies in a spurt of blood, and that's it. Look at a bit of "Onibaba" until 3, then check out a building, down for sandals at Blocks', getting heels for $2 in addition to the $31.80 for sandals, and home to do laundry, John's in, we have steak, and go to "Romeo and Juliet" at the Met (see following pages), he leaves at the first intermission, I leave after the show, to find my snap lock locked, have to talk to Ben and Ceil and Mr. Douai to get it opened, shouting at him, change and steal quarters to subway to John's at 12:30, and he says I can stay there.
DIARY 1954
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12. Talk 7:15-8:15, home at 9 to find door AGAIN locked, and it's a good thing I hit Douai in the elevator, and we rather apologized, because I could tell him with a straight face "somehow the door locked itself again," and he unlocked it and that was that. I'd bought "R is for Rocket" yesterday, found which stories were duplicated, and sat down to finish reading it this morning. Then I typed for a bit, and Cyndy called for lunch, and we talked about John's and my and her and Phil's relationships, and I bought another Hesse book and came back to finish 10 pages by 2:15 pm (NOW!). Then put the finished hundred pages into the binding, typing the contents for all of it, and then get down to work for the census for about an hour until 4, and then get started on Clarke's "Nine Billion Names of God" for a bit, and then John calls to say he's not going to class, so I fix up the apartment, wash a blanket, put out the steak, and call Plaut, who's very busy so he says he'll call us back, which I have to do after we finish eating at 7:45: call him and find he HAS the itinerary for India ALREADY worked out, and will call authorities at United to see if we can't get something better than a priority waiting list position on the July 3 flight from LA to Hilo. John and I discuss our disappointment with Plaut, but now it seems somewhat better. John settles down to work, and I figure to get to mail at last, but then the bug to find exactly WHICH mint stamps I want hits me, so I get out the catalog and album and come up with the 303 mint stamps which will cost $164, or the 299 mint which will cost $125, or the 271 mint which will cost $68, or about 25¢ apiece, and finish at 10, to shower and brush my teeth, coming out to the smell of pot, and John's very high, watching "Changes," and I sit down and play with him, finally getting out the Baby Magic and sucking his balls, and he thrashes about and moans, but finally takes to his own hand after I work with him for over an hour, and I'd come today already to Tom drawings, but I was so worked up by HIM that I had to come, and whacked away at myself, standing over him and on the floor, and finally came, gaspingly, and he didn't. Bed at 11:30.
DIARY 1955
THURSDAY, MAY 13. VERY tired in the morning, very rainy, I get rid of New [AGAIN I've fallen over two weeks behind. Isn't there actually any happy medium SOMEWHERE between slavishly and boringly doing it every day, and having the enormous backlog of two weeks to plow through? There are a few mitigating factors, such as social life, stamps, and census work, but that's really no EXCUSE, just as it isn't any excuse NOT to exercise, which I ALSO didn't do during these two weeks, except to pick up at level one on Wednesday and level two on Friday of this week, which is pretty bad anyway] York Magazines after eating breakfast, and finally read through about five old copies, throwing them all away, and then since Bill had sent me to many US mint stamps the idea of completing the US collection in MINT as much as possible is preying on my mind and I work on generating a mint US want list until noon, when I call Arnie and say I've decided to go to the circus today, since the 101st edition is almost over and I want to get tickets for that AND for John and me for the 100th edition during the next two weeks. Arnie's delighted to come along, saying he'll meet me in front of my place at 12, and he gets here at 12:10, and we're down to buy tickets and see the menagerie and circus (see following pages) and we leave both with somewhat severe headaches from the watching, colors, movement, and excessive noise from the blaring loudspeakers and kids. I had a meeting set up at three with Plaut, but get there at 5:15 and he's alone in the office, but people keep wandering in and he's always bothered by the telephone, but we manage to get dates pretty well settled (HE really didn't have them down much beyond what we talked about when John and I were there, but at least he'd done SOMETHING about the order, and that satisfied John and me as to his goodness, since we were strongly debating giving him a strong ultimatum and taking our business elsewhere), and then John and I talk about them at my place through the evening, while I continue to work on the stamp list and he works, and then we talk about re-dating the trip, so that I have to see him TOMORROW, too, and we're to bed fairly early, tired.
DIARY 1959
FRIDAY, MAY 14. Don't feel like doing anything in the morning, so I sit down in my easy chair after breakfast and got finished reading Arthur Clarke's "Nine Billion Names of God" at about noon, and then I did a little census work, since I had to send in my payroll forms today, and hadn't really done too much to earn my keep, though Mr. Harlan seemed to understand that I didn't have enough to keep me busy. Had lunch and maybe even went out for groceries before deciding that I really had to check up on my shots, and telephoned Executive Health Center to find I didn't need an appointment, and walked across town, finding myself outside the Indian travel agency, and stopped in to find out more about India's weather in the north, and got a couple of nice brochures about the Himalayas, including the notice that I had to get special forms from the Indian Consulate for Sikkim and Bhutan. Well! To the center and get signed up for my shots, and drank down the first shot of polio vaccine, to find that John HAD been talked into thinking he'd had polio before, since he thought it was all done in one gulp, but that was only a booster, whereas I would STILL have to have the series of three for the trip, though I could take the last one after I got back, and would have to take the gamma globulin and malaria pills in Hawaii. Got the plague shot without difficulty, happy because John was feeling fairly awful and feverish from some of the shots he'd gotten, and then I went to the Indian Consulate for the forms, and found that they took 4-6 weeks to fill out, so I'd better get them in soon. Got all the visa forms except for Afghanistan from Plaut also, and from 4-6:30 I sat and talked with him as he again went through all sorts of interruptions and in the interim I copied down all the flights within Nepal that I thought necessary, and tried vainly to come up with a nice flight schedule between Kabul and Lisbon, which is another place John is willing to do, and now our coming-back date is November 5, which now brings our trip up to a FULL 18 weeks, or 127 days! That counts the Friday we leave in the evening and the Friday we get back in the afternoon. I watch "The Possessed" on TV from 8:30-9:30, to John's to sleep.
DIARY 1960
SATURDAY, MAY 15. Home after sex on a leisurely Saturday morning, and John goes to the office to work and I scour the tub with the awful local Finast brand of powder which seems to be mostly filler and flour, and get the inside of the rubber gloves all wet, so they're standing to dry for the next few days on the hamper. Then I finish "Primal Scream" because I don't feel like doing anything, including catching up on correspondence, which is beginning to build, or on the diary, which is beginning to stretch out to more than a couple days behind. By that time I've wasted the entire afternoon, including filling out the payroll form, but I find I don't have an expense form, which makes it worse. Shower and John calls to say he has a meeting at 1 University Place, and I'm to meet him there and we're to go to dinner together before going to the Elgin. I do so and sit for a number of minutes while the DTW meeting finishes up, and we walk to check out the Indian place, which looks expensive for what it is, and we end up down at El Cortijo, which both John and Arnie recommended, and the food is copious, but the almond paste on the two chicken breasts I have is just too sweet and gloppy for words, though the veal John has is very tasty and good. The sangria is mostly ice, so it goes quickly, and the waiter isn't away long enough from the tables so that I can switch with the next table's half-emptied pitcher. Out leisurely, since we've missed the beginning of the show, which I've seen, but John wants to stroll, and we do, getting in about 8:15, and the back seats are rather full, and John gets tied up with someone who, when I wander past, I can't resist asking if he's Burt Baker, and he is, extravagantly praising my new thinness and youthfulness, and John says he has a thick pleasant cock, and we're back to the right side, where there's someone in almost every seat, no cruising, and there's an awful old man next to me that just can't keep his arms to himself, so I move in between two sexy ones, but nothing happens during "Bank Dick," very funny, and "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" again, and we're out at 10:30 and John wants to go to the Triangle (see following page) and we're to John's at 1.
DIARY 1962
SUNDAY, MAY 16. Up to find it cloudy and rainy, so the planned beach day is an impossibility. Sit around reading the Times that I bought last night, coming home in the drizzle, cursing John for not walking faster, and he doesn't have the Katmandu book, nor did he get the Voice, so I settle for the puzzles, and when I finally finish them about noon, I settle down to finish "Love and Will" while John finishes his day's work and settles into the bedroom for a nap. We had an omelet for brunch about noon, which I managed to get down without any bread, and even managed to identify the few drops of Madeira he sprinkled on the partially cooked eggs as "some sort of cognac" which added a strange and not entirely pleasant taste to them. Finish "Love and Will" just after he gets up, and we dress and get out to the new souvlaki place for a shish-kebab dinner, which included TWO skewers of shish kebab and a nice salad for $1.75, and John pays for it, and then we go back for the car and drive into the Village to park in front of the Methodist Church on Waverly and listen to WBAI's Free Music Store, which is doing Sergio's "Oulom," which I take to read as "Ou l'Homme?" and Sergio says it means infinity, so it fits both ways. Kenneth is rather dreadfully potty as the mummy-type wrapping himself UP in bandages slowly with the music, and some dreadful old people keep making comments loudly about the music and the program, and I shout across that they might be happier elsewhere, and the woman in back agrees, and then John SHOUTS ("Yes, why DON'T you leave," which gets everyone against him, saying that I said it nicely, whereas HE said it harshly, and others from the center of the floor berate him for speaking up for his ideas, and I get a poor taste of the current "laissez-faire" hippy type who thinks EVERYTHING is OK. They do leave, and the rest is more pleasant, particularly the deep-toned thing which takes place in complete darkness, where the tacky church interior is transformed into delicacy and beauty with faint light shining through the tall narrow windows, but the ret of the program was awful, even the funny thing of Alcides Lanza. Back to my place to sleep tonight.
DIARY 1963
MONDAY, MAY 17. Decide that, though I really don't feel like it, I have to put in more hours on the census job, so I do some telephoning and go out on a few calls, but there's not too much productivity, and all I can do is wait for more work, and tomorrow Harlan says that 67 pieces are being put in the mail for me, and sure enough, just that number shows up on Wednesday, and I can begin putting in for fulltime work now. Bite my finger edges while waiting for the phone calls, and the phones don't work much of the time to make it even more annoying and irritating. Feel quite hungry, but keep myself down to the cereal in the morning, tuna fish and lettuce in the afternoon, and steak in the evening, maybe with a bit of wine for sousing and feeling good, but that's it, though I'm not remembering to take my vitamins, which I rationalize by "they're so strong, even if I take them every other day, I'm not going to run into any deficiencies." Watch "The Time Machine" on TV from 4:30-6, and it's pleasant to see again, though it seems that much of the movie is cut, since it starts out without ANY kind of explanation (and a few of the stars are completely missing), and the Morlock scenes seem quite short compared with what they were before. John comes in just at the end, and he naps while I read some magazines, and then we eat steak here and get out to the Stuttgart, hoping that the program is good enough so John and I won't get mad at each other. "The Catalyst" I think is quite good, but John doesn't care for it, and the Shostakovich music is quite uneventful. "Salade" is quite a bit the same, with uninteresting music by Milhaud, though Joyce Cuoco is perky and pert, and Bernd Berg is just as cute as a bug. The "Swan Lake" pas de deux is not the best thing that Cragun and Keil do together, but at least the Tchaikovsky music picked things up some before the Stravinsky of "Jeu de Cartes," which I liked better this time, and the four hearts were lovely in their white tights and crotches, and the comedy came off quite well, but still in all it was a rather mediocre evening: much of the short pieces are always the SAME sort of things on a program: poor. Here to bed, fatigued.
DIARY 1964
TUESDAY, MAY 18. John's tired and feverish from his shots, but he works here until noon while I finally get to the visas, typing in everything I know about, getting back into the trip box to get dates for former visits to Thailand, Japan, and Pakistan, and I have an interview with Mrs. Macario at Mr. Mike's at 4, and call Elgin to find that I have just enough time to see the movies if I get there at 1:20, when the place opens, and I do that, to find quite an incomparable bunch of guys there (see following pages). Out about 3:50 and subway uptown to 42nd, getting into Mrs. Mike's just as she wanders inside, and she very quickly gives me all the information I need, except for the mortgage account number, which I'm to get from her tomorrow morning, but she's not there and I wait a week to actually get it from her. Then home just before 5, and Hamp Gillespie is due in any minute, and John's here to welcome him, so I get into the shower to wash my filthy hair, and Hamp comes in while I'm in the shower, and John talked so much about how petite he was and how large his eyes were, that I quite expected someone like Plaut's John at the office, and much was my disappointment when I came out of the shower to find a shirtless blob sitting on the sofa with a blotchy face and sexless box, with a fairly unattractive smile and way of using his eyes. We'd searched through Hart's New York and Cue to come up with Lou G. Siegal's for dinner, and he said he knew it VERY well, thought it was the best food in town, so we dressed and went down there, after having very little to drink since Hamp got high on very little, and he's looking for sex tonight. Walk down to Siegal's in shirtsleeves, and they insist on giving us jackets, and though Hamp doesn't like the sourness of his calf's brains, I think the chopped liver is superb, almost as good as the ersatz at Food Farm, and the matzo-ball soup is absolutely superlative in taste and texture, and the lamb's tongues are a marvelous first in a sweet sauce masking the horridness of their live redness, and the cream pie (banana) with ersatz cream was fabulous, and we stuffed on coffee and cookies, and walked quickly back here for orgy (see subsequent).