1971 5 of 5
DIARY 2507
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12. Wake at 7:30, at last catching up with the time change! Don't have sex again this morning, and John leaves and I get back to the interminable task of going through the mail, this time getting rid of all the Smithsonian Magazines. Each day I've been buying the Times, too, to keep up with the TV and movies, and reading that. Finally get all the souvenirs into sets of stacks of maps, colorful folders to show to others, junk folders only for myself, ticket stubs and transportation fragments and admission pieces, and miscellaneous junk like the pieces of silk, the copies of miniatures, the sea shells, etc. Have lunch, methodically going through all the dirty dishes so that I'll just have to wash them once, and get out all the pornography and go through sorting everything out, throwing away many of the poorer folders, coming again in excitement over my treasure trove, and go through the Times clipping out all the sex movie ads and things I want to see, then go for groceries in a rush at 4 to get back at 4:30 for "Two for the Road" with Albert Finney in bathing trunks for a large portion of time, and Audrey Hepburn looking fine as ever, and then Eddie calls to come over for some grass, and he's over at 5:30 to look through some of the junk, tell me about his new job away from the show, though he says he can still get me in, and I give him about $10 worth free, and he's delighted, telling me that his new black lover, Roger, likes for him to smoke because it makes him hotter---but he has no more parties. Eat dinner and subway down (after waiting 10 minutes for the manual elevator after the automatic one gets stuck) to DTW at 8:20 to sell tickets at the door until 9, then watch nondescript junk by Binzer, Geller, and Gitelman, Joe and Elaine arrive at 9:40, Mel Jones is black and pretty-bodied, and Diane Boardman does an electrifying cunt-clawing, jut-chinned "Cage" type of thing, and Betsy Wetzig (AWFUL name) has a beautiful dancer in Hackney or Penfield, but that's it. Finish at 10:15 and John drives us up to my place where I get bananas for daiquiris and ice cream, and we talk and Elaine tells me how much she likes "Quadrilogues" and John suggests I sent if off somewhere! I show souvenirs and we talk about the trip and everyone's lives, and they leave, tired, at 12:15, and we fall into bed.
DIARY 2508
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13. Sadly up at 5 again, think about New York ad (see P. T11) and John's awake at 6:30 and we have great slurpy sex and both have showers, and the gay is dray (the day is gray, I mean) so we decide to see the Ritual Acrobats of Persia this afternoon, and John annoys me irrationally by saying he's thrown out his student ID card. I exercised yesterday for the second time, but today I just didn't have ANY time as I was determined to type more, and got through four pages of the Trip Diary before I decided I was doing it the wrong way, explained myself on the pages, and then did two pages of current topics, going very slowly and making many mistakes, and I STILL haven't sent off the rent or the check back to Rita, or other necessary things: only having sent a check for Hurok, Chelsea and Proof Coins on Tuesday, when I laboriously brought my check stubs up to date. Then get a quick subway to Brooklyn at 1:20, buying TWO tickets with my student ID for $2, delighting John, and we get lovely seats just off the center of the 6th row, next to the pretty boy in golden corduroys who seems not to respond to sitting next to John. The acrobats are too often on the old side, but about 6 of them are young and edible, and particularly a tall smooth-skinned one, a balding handsome one, and some smaller terribly bulky ones were fascinating to watch, through the binoculars (even though I had qualms, but finally decided "What the hell, it's what I want to do, it's what I am, I'm using them!") Marvelous chewable pectorals, but no discernable crotches, but one wonders what they do for sex offstage!!! The show wasn't very good, sadly, emphasizing the older members, or everyone standing in a circle facing inward so you either see backs or obscured fronts! Out at 3:15 and John wants to nap, so I'm home to sort more junk, washing dishes for ages, and Cyndy calls and comes over with Phil until 7:30, talking about Boston, her job, the trip, and John and I, and they get chased out, I shower, receive Norma at 8:30, Arnie and John at 8:50, we get to Biarritz at 9, wait to be seated until 9:40, awful service, good food. $15 bill for me and John, talking about everything under the sun: trips, mountain climbing, sex, relationships, New York, food, and we leave at 11:30, coming back up for a moment to get Arnie's tape adapter which I'd inexplicably hidden in the filing cabinet, buying a copy of the Times, and we got to bed at midnight.
DIARY 2509
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14. I wake at 4:30 with a rousing erection, think about a GREAT book entitled, acrostically, "Bioptics Poem" (see P. T10), and have to get out of bed at 5 to take down notes, and John's up at 6 to find me, and we read the Times and shower and talk awhile, and then he wants to go for a walk, so we're out at 8:30 past the sunny skating rink, to the zoo for playful bears and seals, up to 72nd and into the fairly busy Ramble, though the cute ones in shorts and pairs vanish before we climb down off the rocks, and back home for John to take a hot bath and I continue with the Times, and phone Joe about bring our own bottle, and I carry the champagne from the remnants of John's party up to Joe's at 11:40, and we sit right down to a pleasant breakfast of lox and bagels and whitefish and cucumbers and coffee and Cakemasters strudel and champagne, feeling just great. Talk at great length to Elaine about second-stage sex, astral traveling, our trip, the River, her friends, our gay lives, and at 3 Avi and Rolf come over to talk about his analysis, their "love bank," our trip, Peter Ream, and at the end they leave and Elaine, in desperation, John says, of all the talk about gay loves that leaves her OUT of it, she says "Oh, Bob, you're just a closet STRAIGHT, and John's half-straight!" Odd. We leave at 4:30 and walk down to pick up tickets for Ann Halprin tonight, and get back at 5:10 to fall very tired into bed. Sleep until alarm burrs us awake at 7, and John cooks hamburger and onions for our dinner, and we're on line at 7:50 and into the downstairs of City Center at 8:10 for a warm-up and then the very lovely bodies and long cocks of her six black and one Philippine beauties. The dances aren't very interesting, but the bodies certainly are, and the "Animal Ritual" COULD be terribly interesting, if both the audience and the participants were stoned. Toward the end they have a trance dance, and I don't feel like joining, but when everyone starts milling around, I get up and look at the orchestra of bizarre instruments (paper drums, constructed fiddles from boxes, bicycle wheels, bowls of water, various percussion drums, boxes, gongs, hanging pieces of metal), and move into the closing center, then move slowly OUT as everyone sits down in waves before me, for a great moment, then at 10:30 to the party (see pages T11-T12).
DIARY 2513
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15. Wake at 6:15 to play with myself, shit, and at 7 have a fantastic session with John for just over an hour, until 8:10, both of us coming fantastically, and then leave about 8:40 to get into Manhattan and buy groceries ("just a few items," totaling $11.40). Sort through some more junk and decide I have to get down to typing, which I do about 10 am and at 1 pm I'm finished, dizzy and sore-fingered, having done only 10 pages, but getting caught up to date, at least. Eat lunch and mope around doing not much, and then about 3 decide to start on stamps, getting in Portugal, the colonies, and a few other things in by 5. Jerk off again to the pornography, which I can't keep away from, and read a few Life magazines to try to catch up. Finally get the rent bill off and the check back to Rita, and then time passes slowly while I shower and try my new shaver, which I picked up from the humpiest repairman in the world this morning, and John comes in at 8 and we both remark that all the newspapers and garbage that I put out in the hall at 3:30 are still there, so maybe they've stopped picking it up in the afternoon. I'm hungry so we eat fairly early, and John's brought his own meat, which is thin and tender, and my chuck steak is incredibly think, coarse-grained, bloody, and almost unchewable. Have some green beans and cake to go along with it, and then we get away from the table about 9, and I watch "Dames at Sea" just to see what's going on on TV, and it's perfectly dreadful, and I watch a bit of "The Lucy Show" and John looks up from his position on the couch and announces that he's going to bed just before 9:30. He does and I watch a foxy John Updyke being interviewed on "Rabbit Redux" and it sounds like a book not to read, and then watch the only full-length film besides "Tillie's Punctured Romance" that exists by Mack Sennett, "The Extra Girl" with Mabel Normand, and the idea of the girl who goes to Hollywood to find that she's NOT the one they want (since the "girlfriend" substituted HER picture), and has all sorts of troubles, is awful, and the only saving grace is a great series of lion-shots with water, hoses, and running screams. Crawl VERY tired into bed with John at 11:30, when it's over, eyes closing.
DIARY 2514
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16. Wake at 7, back on schedule again, and we AGAIN have incredibly beautiful sex. He leaves and I have breakfast, and decide to put away the last of the souvenirs into a pair of boxes which I put at the side of the room, and the place is cleared away for the first time since I got back a week ago. Again settle into reading some of the magazines, and don't feel like doing anything, and waste the time during the morning, shaving to get down to 444 Madison Avenue precisely on schedule at 3:30 to find there's no jobs for "A writer, magazine," when I'm given the choice of technical or magazine, and get the line code for "Magazine Editor," which I'm sure they'd NEVER get a request for. Leave and walk back to midtown to pay $3 for the Erotic Film Festival, and see "Family Affair," which could be funny with the Candy-ish Marian Sweet, the campy Annabelle of "Rhonda Campus," and the "Zarathustra" introduced large cock of their "not monster, just a poor deformed CREATURE" child. "Orange" is truly erotic, and "Getting In" a cop-out, and the hand painted old film stock interspersed with good erotic sequences was very frustrating. Then "Kusama Self-Obliteration" has lots of limp cocks and painted asses, which looks like it SHOULD be fun but ISN'T. Wait through the small-come scene on her pussy, and leave, Subway to John's, jumping down on the tracks to retrieve my pen so I can underline "Treatise on White Magic" which I leave at John's to read, getting there just at 8, and Jeff and Bob and Art come in about 8:30 and we sit down for mediocre lasagna, awful Middle-Eastern cake for dessert, and a nice salad, made nicer by the vodka and tonics and crackers and horse-cock and cheese beforehand. Bob brought some grass in a pimiento jar, and while Art and Jeff and John talk about the projected DTW tour, Bob and I smoke, and get quite stoned, and talk about lots of things, including his rampant bisexuality, and they leave about 11:30, and John and I crawl into bed and start having sex, which is great up to a certain point, then it turns sour and we have to whack away at each other to come, finally turning over, exhausted, at 12:30 to sleep.
DIARY 2
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17. I wake at 6:50, shit, and I don't know WHAT time we get started on sex, but I decide to try to make John come without touching the head of his cock, and work away until my wrist and fingers are tired, and finally use my whole hand, and when we get up, it's 11 am! Tell John in amazement that the ONLY thing I've done in the past twelve hours has been to sleep and have sex! Agree to meet at John's tonight at 8, and I subway to 14th and 8th Avenue and walk across to 13th and 3rd Avenue, having pizza for lunch, and get into "Casey" at the Jewel Theater for $5 at 1 pm, and the people are BEAUTIFUL in the film, but there's only one true orgasm, not well caught on the film, and the rest is sham and off-screen squirting, so it's terribly disappointing, and it's only 90 minutes long, so that even though I sit through the best parts twice, I get out at 3. The theater itself is awful, with red side lights flashing on and off, a too-well lit john at the bottom of awful stairs, and a perfectly dreadful clientele, even that early on a Wednesday. Get home at 3:30 and simply can't resist jerking off, and do so twice, to my chagrin and headache, cursing myself for being so jerky. Eat "lunch" at 5 to assuage my stomach pains, and at LEAST get to the typewriter to type two pages of the diary, up to date again, and scour the bathroom sink and toilet bowl to give myself the illusion of moving ahead, but I really HAVE to get down to serious typing. Don't even have time to do the exercises today, since I telephone Fred Courtney and we talk for a bit about his gonorrhea case from his new-found friend at Tsi-Dun, and then shower and get up to John's at 8, to greet a not-so-cute-as-I-remember Ivan and a very graying Adair, and John comes in at 8:10, talks to Ivan, whom he judges to be a bore, and we have lasagna again, with a good fruit mixture and carrot salad and ice cream with hot chocolate sauce from his new Amana list-$600 buy-$300 radar range, and we talk about the trip and show my photographs and talk about John's TV work, and leave at 11, John saying the evening was awful, and we subway home and get right into bed without sex at 11:30, setting the alarm.
DIARY 2516
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18. I wake at 7 and John's up, worrying about his lack of job opportunities, and I gently suggest to him that he might be being very inflexible: demanding to get only a VERY special type of job, determined to be terribly unhappy if he CAN'T get that type of job. He's impatient with me, and gets out of bed at 8:15 when I do, and we leave together, me getting down to unemployment to find that the $110 from John cannot be included in my pay calculations, and I get back uptown to do more grocery shopping with food stamps, buy wine, and determinedly get to the typewriter to type twelve pages, doing 14 pages through the day, which is more like it. Then have lunch and determine to wash the windows, and get through all of them except the most difficult outside of the kitchen windows before it starts getting dark with clouds at 4 pm. Then scour the bathroom tub with the last of the awful Finast cleanser and wash the dishes, finally get in touch with John Kim and Bob Milne on the phone, and do my exercises, having a nice sense of accomplishment for the whole of the day. John comes in at 6 and I type and shower and we get over to Arno's at 7, and everyone's there already: Allan Pollack and his lover Jim Hakkara (they're not living together yet), and Arno and Kenneth someone, who lives at 24th and Ninth Avenues with someone with two dogs in a duplex $650 apartment, and it's only AFTERWARD that John suggests that Arno and Kenneth may be having an affair, which would make terribly gauche my remarks that Arno's not happy with the city because he's not "getting much lately," and even worse my suggestions that Kenneth might come over to see the rest of my pornography, or hints that he might be interested in Tsi-Dun. We have drinks and chat and then dinner, thankfully, of meat loaf, and liquors afterwards, and the books and small photos get passed around, then the slides come out and they go by mostly without comment, maybe because Kenneth was the only one who hadn't seen them before, and Allan's tired and leaves at 10, and we do too, getting into bed at 10:30. I can't sleep and jerk off (John spent PM at Continental).
DIARY 2
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19. Wake at 5:20, start cuddling at 7:20, I come and John tries but says "It's dead" and stops to shower. I get up and have breakfast and John decides to stay around until we leave for the Avant-Garde Festival, so I have to do something, so I start off by typing ten pages, which takes me up till about 10:30, and then I start scrubbing the bathroom down while washing clothes downstairs, which has gone up to 35¢ for both washing and drying. Joan calls about noon while I'm still washing, and John answers, and she says she might meet us at the festival. We have lunch and Joan comes up about 1:45, trying to change her appointment for her solicitation (telephone) job, but can't, so we go out for a walk to Paley Park to sit and talk about our total joblessness, and then walk across and down to the Armory at 3, and there's a mélange of TV's that look as if they're not quite working, many fellows in not-very-pretty drag, a couple of mime theater people wandering around in whiteface and tights, a fellow in tails sitting on top of a pile of dirt, dozens of "life-size" Batmen, a number of uninteresting slide shows, something to reach into (a mouth), touch (a warm ear), and feel (junky black box), a Ferris wheel that doesn't work, a Yoko Ono maze with a toilet inside, a telescope directed toward an empty canvas 40 feet away, a wind ensemble playing Beethoven's Somethingth, pieces of a piper cub, and 12 hours of movies downstairs, 2 hours of which were unmitigated awful. Say hello to Fred Rzewski, look at the uglies misses Charlotte Moorman (for whom they were preparing a huge cake) and Jill Johnston, and out about 6. John will have a can of fish for dinner, so I buy a YUMMY pastrami sandwich and an éclair to take to his place, eating half while waiting for the second of three subways we need to get to his place, and I read the Voice until I'm tired around 8, and John's tired too, so we decide to smoke, me doing it in a hot tub because I feel I'm coming down with a cold, and we start on some pretty avid sex, but we tease and tease and grunt and slurp and laze around, and finally about 9:45 we both decide to call it off and fall asleep.
DIARY 2518
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20. I wake at 5:10, fall asleep, up again at 7:30 and play with John until he comes, and then he starts working around the apartment and I settle down with reading "Treatise on White Magic" for about 175 pages, and then about 11:15 have some eggs for breakfast, and he says he could stand to come to my place, so we drive in, stopping by the Pottery Barn so that I finally buy him his last Christmas present of a punch bowl of his choosing for $11.24, and up to my place to get a very strange letter from Elaine, and then wash the bathroom down the second time while he works on some things, and then I type three pages while he shaves in the tub and I shower and exercise, finally finishing with level 1, quite ridiculous that it's taken me two weeks to do it, and then we drive off for Brooklyn with a rotting steak for supper for me, and we eat that and some of his leftover lasagna, good at last, and we walk over to Spencer Memorial Church at 8 pm to see two people freezing waiting to get in, and John collects the $2 and I wander through the top balcony blowing into the incredible assortment of dissociated organ pipes they have all over the pews, and then down for the "concert" by the tweedily English AMM group, starting with an audience of 16 and building to an audience of 20, and the best point was when the pianist's voice was raised in a howl-dog version of "Loch Lomond" during the drummer's noodling, the cellist's interesting slurrings up and down and between the scales, and the saxophonist's miscellaneous tootlings. It went on and on, the cat parading up and down the aisle, John leaving to talk to someone in the lobby, other couples getting up to leave, and I lay down on the second pew from sheer weariness and disgust. At 10:15 the ladies in the back break my heart with their pathetic kindnesses and name-rememberings and cake and generosity and goodness, and the more thankless job probably doesn't exist. Then 12 of us (four members, John and I, four scruffy girls, including Nicole, Fred's wife, and two miscellaneous guys) go to John's for grass-laced meat sauce, good punch, and awful talk to 12:15.
DIARY 2519
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21. We wake about 7 and this is the morning John does me, since we seem to be taking turns, and we're up to move around the house, I have boiled eggs this morning with the last of the Arabic bread, and we're out at 10:30 on a bright clear sunny morning toward Massapequa and Don Guidotti's place, and we find it nicely at 11:35, on the corner of the land pointing into Long Island Sound with sailing ships luffing by, and he's unshaved and morose and plays the spectacular Pendereski's "The Devils of Loudon," and we talk about his students, having some of their chocolate mousse, look at the house, talk about the trip and his tooth troubles on his trip, and about 2 we're out to look at the waters, then into John's car to drive to a great seafood place where I have two enormous sole fillets (rather tasteless, but well done) for only $1.35, and they have squid and chicken, and we're back into the car to drive under the lowering clouds, with bits of rain, yet with pieces of cherry-red sunset on the horizon, to show Don where the cruising woods are, and they're building what looks to be a parking lot there, and there it goes! Out on the beach for a few cold moments, and then into the car and drive through the darkening streets back to his place at 5 pm, and leave immediately to try to get either to "And They Put Handcuffs on Flowers" or the Dancers of Sierra Leone, both in their last nights, and we get to my place and I find that "Flowers" is sold out, but we can take the chance of waiting for tickets, and John thankfully agrees we can go to Sierra Leone, and back into the car and get to the Academy at 7:05, getting back aisle seats which we think are a gyp (for $2) until the place colorfully fills up with ethnically-dressed blacks, some terribly tall. The program is neat and swinging, with steps we'll be seeing on dance floors in the next few years, bare breasts, and some of the least sexy men's trousers in the world, all baggy and ill-cut and fringed, through the startle of the double-jointed "arms behind head" was worth the price of admission, and one drummer and dancer were cute. To John's for souvlaki, bath, and bed at 10.
DIARY 2520
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22. Wake early, doze, wake at 7:30 and cuddle, out of bed without doing anything more at 8:15. Subway home to see an article about Yoko Ono in the News for Rita, which I buy, and read the Sunday Times and the Monday News and look through some of the ads for apartments (which John allows me to cop out on, saying that we shouldn't go looking for apartments until he gets some sort of job, which may be out of the city), and some of the ads for jobs, and that finishes at 11, and I get in to start typing again, doing something like 8 or 9 pages per hour, which is a more reasonable rate than what I'd been doing. Want to get on to do something else, finally making a LIST (AGAIN!) of things I have to do just to get most of them off my MIND, and to collect things together, such as "what do I have to do OUTSIDE the apartment," etc, and what to do about writing, and particularly to remind myself about putting the ad in New York Magazine. Also call Rosey Sheik, because it's just getting too uncomfortable with the lower left jaw when chewing or drinking anything the least bit cold or warm. Type 24 pages all through the day, a nice pace, but don't do much of anything ELSE. Eat lunch and dinner and get out to Mattachine at 7:15 in the cold windy evening, and talk to Warren Wilson, the pop-eyed guy, and to four girls who came in to talk to Bob Milne who isn't there yet, and just by chance I have my notes on the gay talk along, so I can satisfy them. Wilson said I should tell Alan Henderson that HE recommended me for the staff position I wanted to ask him for, and Bob Milne said he would check into speaking engagements and get in touch with me for them, but otherwise he seemed terribly busy. We left just before 9 and walked back to the apartment for chocolate chip ice cream, and then watched the Douglas Fairbanks "Thief of Baghdad" on Channel 13 from 10 to 12:30, and the Valley of Fire, the Old Man of the Black Ocean, the Abode of the Winged Horse, the dragon and bat and crab monsters, the tints and the oleaginous organ music all combined into a magical theatrical experience. Crawl cold and drippy-nosed into bed.
DIARY 2521
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23. Wake early, then piss at 7:30, cuddle only to 8:15, then out of bed to eat breakfast and John leaves and I start typing, doing 9 pages in one hour, to get my typing up to speed (if not accuracy) of 43 words per minute, which is good enough for now. Then gather up everything I have to do outside and cash the checks at the bank, call Warren to get three more IBM cashed, since I'm suddenly aware I have NO money to my name after this weekend, look into New York Term Papers to find they're only paying $2 per page while CHARGING $4 per page, with only a two-day turnaround, which I find unacceptable, so I walk out, meeting Antony Gray on the street, and we talk for about an hour, then I buy shoelaces, look at the David Cinema to find it's $5, pick up the laundry, and get in, chilled, to take a shower and wash my hair and eat lunch prior to getting off to Dr. Sheik's at 2:45 for my 3 pm appointment, and I get there almost 15 minutes late, but she can't find anything wrong on the surface, her heat and cold treatments are inconclusive, so we make another appointment for Monday and she tells me to try to find which one is bad. Subway back and get an acceptable $1.25 ($1.75 with generous tip) haircut at the subway booth, then back to call Ann Eristoff and say hello, Joe Easter to say I'll call tomorrow to get the news about Elaine (she didn't like me interrupting OUR conversation to join THEIR conversation about sex), and John calls and says he has to wait for the car and can't go to the movies. I start looking at "Acid House" status and get out at 6, grabbing a slice of pizza on the way, and "Mash" is very funny, though black and bloody, and "Marriage of a Young Stockbroker" is good in parts, but not totally, and get back to the apartment at 10:15 to a stoned John eating peanut butter and quite quiet while I eat dinner of eggs and English, and at 10:30 he says he's tired, having sucked 5 at the Sauna earlier, and not revealing how many times HE came, and we crawl into bed, trying to snuggle a bit, but it quickly gets too hot, and I move away to lie awake about ten minutes after.
DIARY 2522
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24. Wake about 7 with an erection, and John has one (and I'm starting these pages so low it even turns out that I do 29 lines!) too, and we work away on each other; I come first and try and try to get him off, but finally he says, "It's dead," and later says that I rubbed him too hard when I was coming, and that numbed him. He goes off and I go down to Unemployment at 11, and they split up busy line and then don't take "Information" half, and I sound out about that, then get up to find they don't have a rate for me because I'd written "Too little pay," so I cross it off, talk to her supervisor, who refers me to the claims guy, who gets the WRONG folder from the desk clerk, but he takes my figures and I'm going to get $51 per week in the mail in a week or 10 days. Fine. Out at noon and subway back, typing 14 pages through the afternoon, interrupted by a long call from Marty who says that Jerri's quitting work, may be going back to school for a Master's, and he'll be picking up his stuff on Friday, as well as typing. Fine. Decide I want to generate a typed list of everyone who saw "Acid House," and that takes an enormous amount of time and cross-checking of dates, and I'm aghast that I've shown it to 15 personal friends and 18 professionals, for a total of 33 and it's not gone anywhere yet. Shower and wash my hair and fix up the apartment for the weekend, putting everything away and washing dishes and finally even getting packed, getting a call from Bob Milne about a talk to be given in Brooklyn on December 7, and call John to say I'll be there not at 9 but at 10, and get there at 10:15, suitcase hastily packed, with the boots taking up somewhat more than half the room. He serves me some sherry and we talk about the trip, but make no real plans, leaving it to the weather and circumstances. It's raining out and (no, I showered and shaved at John's, because I didn't have TIME at my place) there's the report that there's snow falling upstate, so it'll depend a lot on how the roads are. Get everything together in preparation for tomorrow, and we get into bed to sigh deeply and sleep.
DIARY 2523
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25. Wake at 8 and this time I do him, and then we're out of bed for a large breakfast of a quiche that he makes with vanilla ice cream (since the milk deliverers are on strike), and it's quite fabulously rich and tasty, and we can only eat a half of the whole thing. We're not quite ready at 10, and Trish doesn't show up until 10:15, and we're into the car directly and talk about her acquaintances at the University of Illinois that John knows, and about the book, and friends of theirs, and the teaching and learning business, and the time passes slowly as we get further and further north and see more and more snow. Up past Danbury for the maximum of snow, and it's quite beautiful on all the trees, particularly the pine boughs which it weighs down to the ground. Drive through small side streets looking at the scenery, but it all tends to run together, and the areas look rather more like Appalachia than like rich suburban Connecticut. Around and down and back and along loop trails, still looking and chatting about everything, and stop for coffee and get a map which doesn't help at all, and get into Darien and ask directions when no one recognizes the way, and get to Jan and Helen LaRue's at just 3 pm, before everyone else, and then John and Isao and the beautiful Eve show up, and we all have snacks (and awful clam snacks) and drinks and then about 4:30 we're bundled up and out for a stroll to the Sound, and look at the great sunset colors, and back to more talk and a great fireplace fire and into the dining room at 6 for good turkey, fabulous cranberry sweet-sauce, good gravy on mashed potatoes, and great nut and cranberry bread from Trish, and both pumpkin pie and chocolate cake for dessert, followed by John's baklava. Talk and talk unendingly about school and our trip and politics and new philosophies and old books, and then leave about 10, completely stuffed, to drive back north looking for a place for $10 among all the $12 places, and look in Danbury, too, finding nothing, and settle at Blue Spruce Motel in Brookfield, Conn., for $10, and it warms up slowly and bed at 12:30.
DIARY 2524
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26. Up at 8 and have good sex, and it's finally hot enough to shower, and by the time we repack it's about 10:30 and we just about make it to a plasticky diner while they're giving out the breakfast menus, and I have great French toast with an egg and ham, and John's omelet is good, too, and it's about $4 for breakfast, but it was great. Drive slowly north along route 7, enjoying the sight of the snow falling off the branches as the sun warms them and the car's backwash jostles them, and the clear blue sky points up the clear chilliness of the streams lined with snow and covered trees. Get up to Great Barrington at 1:15, and locate Hassan's "Alladin" restaurant, and he's ill in bed, but the wife is fabulous, and some of the nine children passing through are just beautiful, and John orders the Annipeen, great marinated meat with a sweet sauce in grape leaves, and I have the Samoosa, not as successful, with a hard croute around rather uninteresting meat inside. Both sets of peas have lavish raisins mixed in with them, and the Ulan Bator tea is spicy but rather bitter, though the juicy orange and lime slices help the taste somewhat. They don't have the iced fruit drinks of summer, but they do have a great fruit custard for dessert, and we buy a $10 fruit and nut cake, making the total bill for lunch just under $19. Wow. Out at 2:15 and continue north, stopping to check that Greylock's closed, and get to Bennington to drive around looking for a place, finally settling on the Colonial Guest House for $10 and a teeny-tiny room, and John naps while I read a lot of Ouspensky, and we're out at 7 to the steak place with the come-on filet mignon for $4, and we have drinks and wine and a great hot fudge sundae for dessert, and the whole thing ends up over $15 with tip. Back to the guest house to listen to the terribly banal conversation from below, and John reads a bit until 9:30, and then turns over to sleep, but I finally finish "Tertium Organum" during the night at 10 pm, and then turn out the light at 10.
DIARY 2525
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27. Up aching at 6:30 because the bed's too soft, and don't even think about having sex, and something's wrong with my bowels since I was up at 3 am to do nothing much in the john. Try to do something this morning, and nothing comes. Pack and out at 7 to drive across the Green Mountains, and there are patches of snow on the road which John doesn't like, there's a dusting of light powdered sugar snow on the higher tree branches that gives a beautiful fuzz to the horizon, there are clouds that block out whole flanks of mountaintops from view, and very little traffic. Drive almost out of the mountains until we get to the Skyline Restaurant and its cloudy hundred-mile view, and order all the pancakes and waffles we can eat, and it's fun to put away six of them with the maple and blackberry syrups, and to look at the sexy foursome that joins us at the next table. Continue driving down toward Brattleboro, and John and I had already decided to cut the trip short, since he wants to do so many things back home, and I take over the driving for a bit, and we go more and more south, finally getting on highway 91 for the final sweep back to the city, and the snow finally disappears, though paradoxically the fog and clouds finally lift in Westchester County and we get even a bit of sun, but it clouds up again as we get into a cold NYC at 3 pm, and he lets me off at 9th and 57, so I walk home, get the mail, and find both the elevator and boiler had broken down on Thursday, and there'd be no improvement through the weekend. Up to the cold apartment to put things away and read all the mail that came, then watch "Thief of Baghdad" again from 5 to 7, then switch over to watch the American assault on Everest in 1963, with some spectacular motion picture shots, and then at 8 watch the tribute to Stravinsky, with a nattily danced, fabulously-colored production of his "Le Rossignol," and then at 10:30 I get out to the Sauna on 56th Street (see following pages) and don't get home until 2:15, when John's in bed, but only just, having gotten in at 1:30.
DIARY 2529
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28. Up and laze and cuddle and out of bed at 10 am, and John has coffee and toast and I have some cereal and we both go through the Times, and I watch "Camera Three" with Bejart's "Nijinski," which looks to be fabulous (see next page), and then at 11:45 I leave for Brooklyn to see the Cambodian Dancers, since John can't afford the time and I want to watch TV on Monday night, their only other performance. Read more of "Understanding Media," terribly awful, and get in at 12:15 to get a front row side seat, and decide I'm hungry enough to walk back to the corner for a cheeseburger, and then a root beer and a Drake's Cake, and back at 12:50 to go in and read the book and see the performance (see following page), getting out at 3, and subway back to John's, fearing for a moment that I got the wrong keys, and sit and read until he comes in at 4, and continue reading as he does some various work, and then he makes me two nice vodka tonics and has some sherry, and then at 5 he heats up the rest of the quiche from before and we have that to eat, and then he has a steak while I finish the lasagna, putting the silver paper onto his steak, and my heart rather breaks at his childish displeasure because his guests don't like his silver paper, and now I don't like his silver paper, and I just don't have the heart to tell him that I SAID he was getting too much of it, but in his child-like eagerness to surprise, treat, and please, he was now getting his first disappointment and took it very badly. But I'm NOT going to eat 350 leaves of silver paper just because HE thinks it's elegant! Leave at 7, having a tiff about my "argumentative" way of asking if he wants to see anything, and we stop off at the Public Theater to get two tickets to "Flaming Creatures" on Tuesday, and up to the Extension at 7:30 to buy two MORE student tickets at $2, and then wander around the block, many blocks, for about 20 minutes waiting for the audience to be led in, and I think it's a VERY depressing performance (see subsequent pages). Smoke, bed at 11.
DIARY 2534
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29. Wake, cuddle, he does me VERY nicely, I do him more awkwardly, but he doesn't complain about my length of time, it just makes my arm, wrist, fingers, and jaw sore from the amount of time it takes. Ready to leave at 8:50, so I subway home, shave and brush my teeth by 10, and down, nervous, into the subway for the appointment with Dr. Sheik at 10:30, and the X-rays haven't shown anything, so we take our best guess that it's the tooth next to the end in the lower left jaw and it immediately is evident that the Novocain didn't work well, even though the lip IS numb: there's pain, and I twist and try to avoid the tingling twinges when she gets near what seems to ME to be the nerve, which she says isn't exposed at all. So she fills it with the temporary cream cheese of zinc oxide to medicate it, and I subway home with a numb mouth. Type 12 pages to catch the diary up to date, look through the package that I get, torn, from Bali, which leaves only the package from Kota Kinabalu and another from Kathmandu for me, and the woodcarvings for Mom and Rita yet to arrive, and the plane tickets are now complete and can be taken in to Pan Am. By the time I finish with these and lunch, it's 3:45 and I get down to the Elgin (see next pages) for "Devil's Eye" and "All These Women," and return at 7:30 to talk to Fred about Tuesday's Mattachine talk, and Rita calls, arriving on Wednesday for a week, and watch "Home" on TV with Gielgud, Richardson, Dandy Nichols and Mona Washbourne, a Beckett-like play about an insane asylum which is obviously the world, then eat dinner and watch "Orphans of the Storm" with the ludicrously suspenseful separation of the Gish sisters in French Revolutionary Paris, and John's called from Murray Louis's house on Barrow Street, and I said I'd not come down for dinner, but at 12:15 John isn't back yet, so I shower and finish (FINALLY!) "Understanding Media" by 1:15, and turn off the lights, figuring he's not coming, but then wake momentarily when he crawls into bed, and in the morning he tells me that he got in at 2 am after leaving his place at 12:30.
DIARY 2539
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30. He's up and out at 8 before I'm out of bed, and get to work typing 13 pages of the diary, and then take another hour to type the headings on all the trip diary pages which aren't for the one day of the week that the heading is typed on, and bring the table of contents page up to date, and then I decide it's about time that I dust and vacuum the apartment for Rita's coming, and that takes a good long time to do well, and I rip the last pair of blue jeans I have in the ass doing it. Then have lunch and decide to take the plane tickets down to Pan Am before seeing the film festival at the Agee and getting groceries, but it takes so long to explain to the girl exactly what routes we actually took, and where we went through the ticket changes, that it's 4 by the time I get out, and there's no time to catch the film festival, and anyway I call the next day to check the hours and it's been cancelled since last Tuesday, anyway, being replaced by non-pornographic movies, and let's hope that's the first of a large number of theaters who go out of the expensive not-so-hot movies business. Get groceries and almost spend all my remaining food stamps, and back to find ANOTHER package from abroad, this one the second one from Nepal, which leaves only the wood carvings for Mom and the package from Kota Kinabalu with the last three of the Heinlein books for me. Then it's 5:30 and time to subway down to "Flaming Creatures" at the Anthology, and it's out of focus, continually coming too close to faces to see anything, with a series of limp cocks which just lie there or are ineffectually tweedled back and forth, a busty screamer who distends her painted mouth through a lengthy earthquake sequence, but mostly the screen is taken up with terribly old and ugly female impersonators, and it's always a surprise to find real women in the sequences. It's only 45 minutes and we drive to John's, where we have sherry and champagne with our salmon and steak, and then we talk in some detail about the idea of my being a technical person with DTW for the tour, and I try phoning Art, but he's not home. To Arnie's to watch "Male Hustler" on CBS Reports, bed at 11:30.
DIARY 2540
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1. Up again to no sex, being put off by our lengthy talk last night about my telling Rita about John and me RIGHT WHEN SHE COMES IN, and I force my way by saying he must believe that I have SOME better feeling than he about the possible feelings of my sister when I tell her, and he reluctantly agreed, finally admitting that NOT sleeping together for a night or two isn't going to substantially change our relationship. Loaf around, having breakfast of scrambled eggs, before leaving at 9:15 for the stamp show which opens at 10. It's lost it's foreign section, which I hadn't wanted to see, and so it was only $2.50 for the $2.50 catalog and the Aristocrats and American stamps. FABULOUS show, though it impresses me with the impossibility of having a decent collection of ANYTHING unless you're VERY rich. Then out at 12:10 and pass St. Bartholomew's Church and go in for a mediocre half-hour organ recital, then get down at 1 to find the Bleecker Street Cinema doesn't open until 2:30. Eat a poor pastrami sandwich and read some Sci-Fi stories, then get down for a hysterical "The Devils" with a too-heavy Oliver Reed and a too-modern décor, and a darkish "The Fox" with a too-intellectual Keir Dullea and a too-beautiful Ann Heywood. Out at 6:15, having attracted NO ONE into the last row with my sexiness (though there were only 20 people in the place at the most crowded), and get home to shower and eat dinner while looking at the first part of "All the Way Home" with a weeping Joanne Woodward and a typically blustery drunk Pat Hingle, and then Rita comes in at 9. We talk until 9:45 about family and jobs and trip, and then decide to get up to the Senegalese Dancers, gratified that the subway only makes one stop between 97th and 125th Street, and we get in during the National Black Theater's chauvinistic introduction with good-voiced singers, then get an introduction to Cassius Clay, of all people, and then an hour and a half of good drumming and dancing and singing and double-guitar playing by the ugly Senegalese women and few cute-torsoed men, THEN the talent show after another about of Muhammed Ali, and we get back at 12:30 to get to bed at 1:15.
DIARY 2541
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2. Wake most amazed at 10:30, and get right out to unemployment at 10:45, getting back at 11:45, after being told I was in the wrong line: I've been in EVERY line: first time, November 11, I was in the INFORMATION line, then on the 18th, I was on line O, when I had to give them the Social Security card at 8:45, then on the 24th, I was on line E, when I fought for the Claims hearing to establish my rate at 10:45; then on December 2 I was on line A, when I filled out my second "request" card, having SOME evidence that I filled out my first one LAST week. So next week, it's BACK to line A, the first repeat. Gee, when do I get to the REGULAR one? Back for lunch and a long talk with Rita about my being gay, and only a few weeks ago Mom asked, "Do you think Bob's queer?" and Rita answered, bless her, "It's POSSIBLE." So now she knows, but we agree that Mom would RATHER NOT know. Then she decides to go out for a walk about 3, and I type 7 pages, and then shower, between calls from John and Bob Milne and Joan and lots of other people, and John arrives at 6:15 and we go out to eat at Kanawa, where we have only passable teriyaki and other assorted dishes for a total bill of $19, and I'd run down to the City Center at 7:30 to stand on an impossibly long line, and finally buy two $5.50 balcony seats for $6, running back to finish dessert, and we get to the theater at 8:05, 10 minutes before the curtain goes up on a lousy "Renard," with no one capable of giving a truly amusing performance in the overly-camp French farce with the horridly poor sound of the old recording. "Firebird" was again the hit of the evening, though Angele Albrecht did NOT have the leading girl's part, and she lends such STRENGTH to the role, I loved her all the more in "Sacre," even though I felt the rest of the cast was merely mediocre. Back home for John to prepare popcorn which we all sit around and eat, while Rita and I have orange juice and John has sherry, and we watch "Changes" until John gets a headache and moves across to the chair, and then at 112 it's time for bed, John putting his foot out as I crawl in, so there's nothing for it but to do him, which I do, Rita passing for the bath.
DIARY 2543
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3. Wake at 8 and he does me elaborately with Baby Magic, though we have to be slightly careful that our sighs and groans don't reach out too distractingly to Rita's ears. He's up and out at 8:45, and I lay around for awhile and then go out for groceries while Rita still sleeps, coming back to roust her out of bed. Type two pages, have lunch, and get out to try to go to the bank, but it's terribly crowded and she says she'll lend me money for the weekend, so we continue our walk in the cold day up to the Metropolitan. She insists on looking at each picture, and it takes an age to go through the Italian paintings section, which I'm not terribly impressed with, but when we get to the others, especially the 19th century sections, it begins to look like a great museum. Dash to the restaurant just before 2:30 to get a very expensive lunch of awful fried fish, and then I return home through an unproductive ramble while she continues in the museum. I fuss with nothing until she gets home, and then we're out to dinner at La Fondue, which looks like it might be crowded, but it's only people milling about in front of the door, and we're into the crowded but cozy back room where the order comes very quickly: Rita has a heavy CHEESE quiche while I have a great vegetabley paté, then we both have CHEESE soups, rather watery, then we share a CHEESE and filet fondue, the first filling and boring with bread, bread, bread, and second not having many things to dip the meat into, merely buttery something, horseradishy something, and piccalilli something, with a good salad and dressing, then she avoids the CHEESE cake for dessert and has spiced pear while I have banana cake with rum raisin ice cream with chocolate sauce, and the whole bill comes to about $18, and the place reeks expense. It's 10 to 8, so we walk across and grab a cab, I riding down to 21st and walking back to 28th, Rita JUST making it to James Cunningham at Judson Church with John. I get to meeting and tell Alan Henderson I want to man a phone, and he says Thursdays, fine, and we get many discussions (see next page), and I leave at 10:30, getting to John's about 11 to find him already there, and we're quickly into bed.
DIARY 2545
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4. Wake early for sex, but we're out fairly late at 10, getting up there about 11:30, and one of John's problems is solved immediately when Judy suggests the archives COULD be stored in her attic, and I have to press it before John sees how good an idea it is. Jeremy's playing in the yard for a bit, and only when he comes in do I devote my attention to him (quiche for lunch, courtesy of John), playing with his nice plastic squares and cylinders, then getting to paper planes until it's almost dark, then finish reading "Understanding Media" as he flies his planes around me, and then John and Judy are finished with their problems and come down to talk about various things of business, and we listen to lots of Igor's recordings of electronic works and some of Pendereski, and drinks come around more and more often and everyone is getting quietly high, and Judy begins talking glowingly about her Polish harpsichord maker who lives with some other doll and another very rich fellow somewhere in the West 80's, and she suggests we'd love to go to bed with her Steve, and we talk about the trip and the French fellow we met, and we swing higher and higher on clouds of alcohol, so that by the time the great dinner of lasagna comes out with the wine, we're all laughing at anything that comes past our heads. Sit around the table for hours afterward talking about the book business and her troubles giving birth to Jeremy, who might be mentally affected by his long hours in her birth canal, Igor's lovely reception in Australia, her wisdom and glory in getting loans from her rich friends and family for the $10,000 harpsichord, possible new jobs for John, the troubles they're having with the house, the glories of living up in the country, the goodness of the apple sauce cake that the girl scouts sold to her, the state of music and education and politics today, and when we finish it's 11:30 and I stagger into the bathroom to take a shower in the slimy water that I can't decide whether it's too hard or too soft, and John's already in bed in the lower bunk, and I'd forgotten that Jeremy's room doesn't have any shades, so I resign myself to getting up when the sun's first rays come in the naked windows.
DIARY 2546
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5. John's out of bed with a perfunctory peck at 8:30, and from the sounds below, Jeremy's awake already. Dress and out and begin getting back into Russell's book on "Knowledge," but I can't concentrate with Jeremy noodling around, so I go down to the john and find the July, or thereabouts, 1971 issue of Playboy with the symposium on homosexuality, which I read and take notes on for my lectures, and then make more planes for Jeremy, who's come up with the fabulous idea of making multi-sheeted papers for planes, which means he can expend more energy on them when he throws them, but that they still only seldom hit the roof of the 13-foot ceilinged room. Read him a bit of the reissued comic book about the superheroes, but none of the really sexy ones are in it, and I settle in on the heavy breakfast of an 8-egg omelet with sausage and coffee, and we leave about noon, having a pleasant drive back through the sunny roads, and I'm upstairs to find that Rita's bought the Times, so I look through that for a bit, and then get ready to go to Joe's at 5, and Joe's acquaintance John is reasonably attractive, and we have more drinks and Joe mainly talks about his troubles and delights with the Montessori school he's teaching, telling endless anecdotes about his 6-year-olds and their clevernesses and HIS abilities to get the best out of them, and it turns out that John's working freelance at Norton's, and they're always looking for new talent, so I give him my name and address and tell him to get in touch with his boss to get in touch with me. I wanted to have Rita get Joe something for his liquor shelf, but all the booze shops were closed, so we settled for Almaden wine with the fabulous duck with sadly NO sauce, the buttered squash, the limp salad (the starting quiche was unforgivably soggy of crust), and had some awful Spanish brandy in his large snifters for a finale, and settled back on the sofas to talk and talk before I found myself falling asleep, suggesting that we leave at 11. John and she went down on the local, and I took the express to John's, telling him all about the evening, and he was still sorry that he wasn't invited, I could tell, but didn't press it any.
DIARY 2547
MONDAY, DECEMBER 6. Leave John's at 8:15 after showering and shaving and brushing my teeth with the electric toothbrush that I brought along, and subwayed up to the dentist's for my 9 am appointment, hoping desperately that it wouldn't be as bad as last week's drilling. Right into the chair for the shot, and there were a few pangs of pain, but they passed and I could take the rest of it in stride, happy that it was all over at last, though sad that she had to drill down the cusp of the UPPER tooth to get rid of a high spot in the filling "or else there'd be nothing left," as she put it. Back down home to find Rita still in bed. Read the rest of the Times while she gets showered and face-creamed and toiletted, and I suggest we go to the movies that afternoon, and take her up on the roof to show here where the Paramount is, and she goes out shopping for me, buying me the first and the last of the Moody Blues records, so that I have a complete set now, thanks to her, and I laze around the house (write Elaine) until time to meet her at 1:15, and we sit through an ever-beautiful "Women in Love" and a perfectly terrible "Music Lovers," and why doesn't everyone come to the conclusion that Richard Chamberlain, beautiful though he is, simply can't ACT? Again, Christopher Gable (who joined the Royal Ballet in 1957 and was a Principal Dancer in the 1965 season, but didn't appear in the programs before or after 1965) had a big part to play in both, and it seems he has the lead in Russell's latest "The Boy Friend." Hmmm. Out and taxi down to a mislocated Paris Brest and end up eating in Chez Napoleon for about $16, far too expensive for mediocre food, and taxi down to Open Theater just at 7 to sit around for half an hour before "Terminal" starts at 7:30. It's formless, emotionless, too rapidly done, and fails to touch me, and we're out at 8:30. Taxi back here and have popcorn, and they watch "Sally of the Sawdust," which I'd seen before, from 10 to 12, and neither of them falls asleep during it, much to my surprise, so it must have been a great movie. Then we separate into our respective bedrooms, everyone seemingly not disturbed by the presences of all these other people in the same small apartment while bedding down.
DIARY 2548
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7. John's up early and out, while I stay in bed, tired, until I feel I must get up and go to the bank and get groceries, which I do, with money in my pocket for the first time in ages, feeling great, and I pay back Rita what I owe her, and don't feel like going out at all during the day, so she's out shopping, not wanting to see "The Gang's All Here" which I want to see, and which is the only thing I care to see. I sort through the stuff that I have to do next (finish "Playboy Book of Science Fiction") for about the fifteenth time, feeling somewhat exasperated that nothing seems to get done, and write letters to Arthur Derounian, telling him to send me a list of possible publishers, to Sidney Porcelain, asking how his copy's been doing, and to Walter Joseph, just checking if he's dead or not, and almost write to Lois before I decide I'd better phone her, and make arrangements to meet at the Metropolitan for lunch on Saturday, and then Rita's back about 12:30 trying to decide what to do with the rest of the day, and Lutece comes up and we're dressed and there at 1:40, paying $2.50 for an incredibly slow taxi ride through rainy streets. Sit inside looking out onto the surprisingly bright porch, and we start with mushrooms and artichoke hearts for her, normal, and the assorted paté for me, and the NEW paté is absolutely out of the world in taste and assorted textures. Then have chicken in the crust for her, which she likes, and Poulet a la Biere, which is tender to the point of preternaturalness and very tasty, and she has the Bavarois and I have the Sherbet with cassis for dessert, and she falls in love with cassis. Out just before 4, groaning on the walk back to the apartment, and she stops off for more shopping (I buy "The Young Male Figure" and 2 Hesse books of which I read "Poems"), and gets back at 6:30 for the subway to the Brooklyn Academy to change tickets for "The Screens," then to Brooklyn College for an interesting evening (see next page), and get to John's about 11, and we smoke and go into an incredible sex scene, except that after all the playing at the end, he doesn't come at all, and I have to bring myself off with my own hands, which is frustrating for the both of us, but a measure of just how high I am. Sore and completely stoned to bed at midnight.
DIARY 2550
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8. Up quite late, feeling spaced from the previous smoking, and out to get to St. Clement's to find a pleasant Vince waiting for everyone to arrive, and finally Jeff showed up with coffee and we moved some risers around for a couple of hours, going from an amphitheater effect to two parallel rows on either side, with an auction stand at the far end. Swept up and neglected to go out for lunch, and then about 2 went up into the light booth to watch John Moore scurrying up and down ladders while David, beautiful lank-haired blond David, turned dimmers up and down while John labored under the difficulty of not having made a MAP of where the lights connected to the dimmers were on the ceiling itself. And he tended to use the word "special" for everything, until it had no sense and was finally dropped. I amused myself by picking out 200 or so amber beads in the junk on the shelves, and John arrived and the decoration went on very quickly, then Arnie arrived to help, and finally about 6 we left to race uptown and eat in the Evening Star restaurant, then dash up to the apartment to change and walk back down at 7:10, to be appointed a cashier. The evening started very slowly, with only DTW members and workers arriving, and by 9 it had barely started, then the beautiful Arthur M. arrived, spreading black cheer, and Matt Turney bought the first doll for $10, and the auction finally started at 9:45, the blanket being the best thing, I joining in the bidding until it got too high at $82, and John wanted the macramé thing, but stopped at $24, and I went ahead and got it for $33, and that solves my Christmas present for him. Then the prices were cut and things went well; I bought myself a terrarium for $2 and booties for $8, and held onto Arthur M.'s wallet for him, and Jeff mentioned my collection and Arthur said I should be sure to call him and ask him over, which I'm willing to do, but wonder when I'll get a chance, and if I'd ever live down my nervousness if he ever actually ARRIVED. Everyone's tired from working and dancing by 11:30, and we leave to walk home, I feeling vaguely sore from using muscles strongly, and I'm only just past #2 in exercising.
DIARY 2551
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9. Up feeling sleepy, and John leaves without touching me. I get up to again spend a couple of hours doing absolutely nothing, and I keep adding to my list of things to do, and the souvenirs from the trip are scattered around the room from the time I showed them to Rita, and I haven't done a thing with "Acid House" as to actually sending it out again, and have done nothing, except talk to John Hawkins, about getting a job, and nothing about looking for an apartment, and nothing about catching up on correspondence, even though Mom is mad at me, says Rita, for not writing to her, and it seems that things just pile up without ever getting done, and my skill at wasting time has been honed to such a fine point that I can go through a whole day, completely occupied, without actually ACCOMPLISHING anything, except shuffling around piles of things. New LITTLE things that come up completely relegate more important things to the more distant future, so that some things are in danger of never being done. Like people said about my apartment when I'd been in it for 6 years, and they said "Oh, it'll look great when you finish fixing it up," I feel very silly about characterizing my activity as having "just gotten back from my trip," when it was actually over a month ago now. And still the stamps haven't been put into the album, the books I want to read haven't been read, though I have bought two more of the Hesse books to COMPLETE my collection of everything that's been translated so far, along with the "Dune" books to take lots of my time. Anyway, I get out later in time to go to unemployment, then back to the apartment for lunch and waste more time before 1:45, when I'm down to the Elgin for "Temptation of Dr. Antonio," "Toby Dammit" and "La Dolce Vita" in the Fellini series (see next pages), leaving promptly at 5:40 in order to get up to Mattachine at 6, but stand outside reading the science fiction stories until 6:30, when I move into the hotel lobby, then phone Bob Milne and get the key from Bob Girton, get in for a great first evening (see following pages) and leave at 10:10, getting back to my place to find John just returned from HIS viewing of "La Dolce Vita"!
DIARY 2558
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10. John AGAIN leaves without sex, and it's becoming a habit too sad to continue. Again waste the morning over nothing in particular, and down for the 1 pm performances of "The Clowns" and "La Strada" at the Fellini Festival (see next pages). Out just before 6 and walk in the very cold weather (though it had been up to about 60° in the afternoon) down to price Kake books at the Legend, and they're so cheap there (3 for $15, essentially) that I avoid walking down to the Studio in hopes of finding them cheaper, and subway back to have dinner and call John to meet me at the Clark Performing Center of the YWCA on 51st and 8th at 7:45. Down just a bit late and into the tiny theater just behind Mike and a fatty I'd met before at John's party, and the lights go down and nothing happens for about 10 minutes, then there's a long drawn-out "VD" with no discernable plot and wildly absurd happenings, best of all Bill Dremak who comes out as a clown-guru with a marvelous almost-straight face and a number with finger cymbals that brings down the house. The acting by everyone concerned is abysmal and Joan insists on playing all her tarts with such a heavy British-theater accent that they simply aren't believable. She later telephones and says that she KNEW it was awful, that the "baby director" was the cause of her problems, and the next night she toned down her makeup, played the wickedness a bit more subtly, didn't shout as much, underacted rather than overacted, and let it go from there. John thought it was absolutely dreadful, and liked "Deathwatch" by Genet even better, though I thought it absolutely stank, both from the play and from the acting, and even the lovely Anthony Pearl was so awful as the guard he wasn't pleasant to look at. John left and I began to think Joan had too, and the final play was a bit better, though the incest theme would have been taken twenty times as far by any playwright not six years behind the times and six years younger. Back home to be shocked that John's not here, and I keep calling him, fearing he meant me to go to his place, and I clean up the souvenirs waiting for him and he finally gets in at 12, having been to the trucks, and we smoke (see following pages).
DIARY 2563
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11. Up terribly groggy from the night before, and John leaves quickly and I get down to fixing up details, like clearing the tables off from souvenirs I'd sorted out the night before, and then I'm deciding to get to sending out the Christmas cards that came yesterday, and I find that I don't have many stamps, so I find how many I need and dash down to the Post Office before noon, but of course it's open later for the season, and then I get around to the supermarket, where I meet and have a long talk with Arno, who might be willing to help out with Mattachine, and he'll at least help me on my references, and I get groceries with food stamps and get home to eat lunch and get back to the cards, getting them all done, and then John calls and says he'd like to come over and get a Sauna ticket and go there, and I'd just as soon sit home, so he comes over, I have dinner while watching "Calcutta" on TV, and the Louis Malle thing is rather a bore once you've BEEN to Calcutta, there's really nothing to be learned from his film, since you've SEEN all that local "color." Finish with the cards to find I'm only sending out 32 to start with, though there are many who always send me that I'm NOT sending until THEY send, so I'll be sending out more later. Then have time, so I write a long letter to Bill, and earlier I'd even felt lazy enough to watch "The Winged World" on TV by National Geographic, and when I finished with the letters I sat down and did some reading, and then John came in. It seems we got right to bed, since John was tired out from his session at the Sauna, and he said there was quite a nice group of people there, and of the seven nice ones he had all seven, while no one had him, though I'm beginning not to believe him when he gets all this activity without doing anything like coming himself. Wait a minute: I do that all the time, so why can't he? It's probably OUR activity (excessive rubbing) which makes us relatively insensitive to OTHERS' sensitive touches, and so we CAN go through many before succumbing to the temptation to come ourselves. I think this is just a tiny bit decadent, but it makes us both happier that we have EACH OTHER, who understand each other's needs so well.
DIARY 2564
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12. Alarm rings with a clatter at 8, and John calls Art to come up here, since he's nicely parked, and Art arrives at 8:45 and we're north along the Hudson, over the fogged-in George Washington Bridge, up the Palisades Parkway and see signs for the Christmas Festival at Bear Mountain (John was bound for High Tor State Park), and we decide to see if the blacks have still taken over the place. Art pays the $1 for the parking lot, and we have hot chocolate and cake inside to warm up, then look at the display of old toys and contest cookies before I drag everyone out at 11 to see the reindeer draw the sled of Santa, and the deer are small and warlike, so that one even has one of his delicate antlers snapped off, and another's tip is further velveted with clotted blood. We go through Santa's house and get lollipops, look at the Administration Building where I buy a trail map of the Palisades, which should come in handy this summer, and then we're back inside to look at the restaurant lounge area, buy popcorn, get a rate sheet, drive around Hessian Lake to see the vapidly modern Overlook Lodge, but we'd not mind staying in the smaller lodges for $10 some wintry weekends, and then we drive into some small town to buy groceries for lunch, then drive to Gooseneck Lake State Park to find the road closed, so we sit in the car and eat ham and cheese and rolls and coffee cake and eggnog and tangerines, and then out walking to gather moss and lichen-covered rocks and weeds for our terrariums, looking at old foundations, the small bits of blue sky peeking through the clouds, and it's colder and dimmer as we get back to the car at 4 to drive down to the city, John leaves us off while he goes to move someone from DTW to another apartment, Art watches "Home" while I read the Times, then they go to the Open Theater while I do the double-crostic in only an hour, and they're back at 9 and we're across to the Yangtze River for cheap dinners, Art talks for a bit about his sadness about Bob's leaving him, and John and I are both tired, so we drive to his place and shower and get into bed, where we cuddle and talk about how glad we are to have each other, and we're quickly to sleep in an apartment so warm we have the electric blanket turned off.
DIARY 2565
MONDAY, DECEMBER 13. Up without sex and read the Village Voice and decide to stop in the Sierra Club at 250 W. 57th to see what's in their special book sale, and end up buying "Kauai," "Everest" and "Cascades" for $2 apiece, using a subway token to pay part of the tax, which I hadn't expected. Back to read the depressing TEXT to the beautifully photographed "Kauai" and Ed Berger calls to talk longly about his trip to Europe, especially Rome, and how he's going to do Central America this spring, and how we should get together, and I should call him tomorrow at 9:30. Then type 6 pages to at least START on the task of getting caught up, since I'm almost two weeks behind schedule, and then dash through lunch so that I can get down to the Elgin at 2 promptly (see next pages) for "Variety Lights," "The White Sheik" and "I Vitelloni." Out fairly dizzy at 7, subway home to start dinner and perform level #3 of exercises for the FIRST time with a continuous stint of 20 pushups, and in less than 10½ minutes, as required, to continue the progression of two weeks for each level for getting back into shape, though I doubt I'll be up to date and finished with the FOURTH level by January 1. John comes in at 7:45 just as I'm finishing, and I eat and he reads as we watch the BBC production of "Tales of Hoffman" with Michael Molese, a surprisingly young Geraint Evans as a camera-conscious villain, and Elizabeth Harwood as an ineffectual heroine, but the choreography was fetching with the fellows wearing only golden g-strings or literally only strings of pearls, showing ass after ass quite remarkably, and Offenbach surely wrote some of the most beautiful melodies there are. That's over at 10 and John wants to watch part of "Blood and Sand," so we watch that, but then he's tired and immediately goes to bed at 10:45, which makes me mad, since he took a bath during the opera, and I have to take a shower since I haven't had one for two days, but when I get into the tub there's no hot water, so I have to be content with spraying myself with deodorant and crawling into bed. Then Bob Milne calls with a job at Cornell, just before 11 so I can't be mad at him for calling me so late at night.
DIARY 2568
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14. We're both up feeling horny, and John goes down on me, but I don't want to come, since I'm expecting to have a wild time at Ed Berger's, which makes me feel quite guilty, which makes me go down anyway, and so I reach down for the vibrator and do John quite roughly and he seems to enjoy it enormously, and I give him the excuse that I know I smell because I hadn't showered. He showers and then I shower, and he leaves and I can Ed at 9:30, but he says he has to take his mother to the airport at 11, so I should call after my lunch with Lois at the museum. OK. I get in to type two pages after fussing around with nothing, and then I shave and get ready to get to the museum, stopping in the 86th Street Marboro's to buy the "Vintage Bradbury" when they have no Heinlein, and meet Lois and Reenie in the lounge, talk with Lois through two Bloody Marys while she says that the characters all seem shallow, but there's lots of good writing, but the lead character is too self-centered, and we have lunch, and I call Ed at 2:20 and the painters are coming up, and he apologizes, so we're down to Scribner's to buy some Robert W. Service for Mark, Lois's son (and she proudly shows me HIS picture and her boyfriend's picture---am I supposed to desire them?) and then it starts hailing and we get a cab to 500 E. 83rd Street for Sylvia Carewe's, and she has black-dyed hair and is terribly fat, with sciatica yet, and we drink (with my $1.25 sack of ice cubes) and she talks and shows her paintings and tapestries and reads her poems about her home, and talks about her ungrateful son, her divorced rich husband, and I talk a bit about the trip and my book, and Lois goes on and on about her travels with Rennie, and we order Chinese food and eat it, and talk and talk while Reenie sleeps and I play with the two lovely cats, and finally we leave at quarter to 9, I ride the taxi with them to 7th, buying three more Heinleins at Bookmasters, get home to find no call from John, read (again) the first part of "Revolt in 2100," that I'd lost in Hawaii, and at 11 John calls to say we might as well sleep apart, which I started out thinking was fine, but before the evening was through, I regretted it (see next pages).
DIARY 2571
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15. Up at 10:15 after jerking off at 9, and call John to say I thoroughly missed his presence, and then got down to catching up on the diary, doing a number of pages after breakfast and before lunch, and in between telephone calls to Joan for a long time about the awfulness of her play, and to ask Alex about a copy of "Acid House," left word at Arthur M.'s answering service, talked to Arno about Mattachine, Kaplan and Kelenan about speaking for Mattachine, with Norma about the thrown-out Sunday Times Entertainment sections, and tried to get the TV quiz show on the phone, but couldn't, and made an appointment with Azak for a stool and blood examination. Down for the mail and more Christmas cards, and finished up the evening by typing all of twenty pages, to catch myself up to date with writing, and then exercise successfully for the second time on the final stage of Level 3, so that I can begin to go on to the more demanding level 4, then John comes in at 7:30, with a can of salmon, so I make hamburgers and eat them while he sits and eats his salmon and an apple, and I get the uncomfortable feeling that I'd rather eat alone, reading Life, than eat without talking with him while I stare out the window at the smoggy, cloudy day. He takes a shower while I write three more Christmas cards to people who always send me (and I wish they wouldn't, but I send BACK to them) and discuss what I should do with the request of application to the National Council on the Arts. He sits and reads his Village Voice while I sort through final things to do, and then he continues to read while I write all the coming dates into the 1972 datebook that I picked up and get out two pages of "Acid House" summary to send to the only interesting ad in the whole 16 pages of "Everything for Everyone," and then read the Voice while he lays in bed with a sherry looking at the latest issue of Life, and at 10:45 we both can't think of anything more to do with the evening, neither of us wanting to smoke, obviously, and both feeling too fatigued from the day to have sex, so we cuddle for a bit, trying to sleep in the old cock-in-my-hand position, but we can't quite make it, so we separate and fall asleep at 11.
DIARY 2572
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16. Wake at 7:30 and both come with Baby Magic, out at 8:45, and I sit down and type the diary page for yesterday, feeling good about being up to date. Then write a long letter to Mom, the National Endowment on the Arts, Marilyn Davis for a job at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and send the synopsis and outline to Authors. Beforehand I went down to unemployment, then came back to cash checks at the bank, get legal food stamps, get illegally late food stamps at the lovely place on Broadway and 57th, find that the small place in the middle of the block between 6th and 7th on the north side of 57th doesn't do it, and get refused because it's too late from the southwest corner of 57th and 8th, so I won't try THAT place again. Have only two more new-style ones to go, but they might not work, since they're both October, unless I can find a new bank, or the one on Broadway continues to not check. I assume I'm not getting any more, since my six months will be over with the period July-December. Pick up laundry and get groceries, and get the mail, which isn't much. Then with lunch and reading Life magazine, it's time to shower and get out to the bus at 4:15 for Azak's. It only takes half an hour and we're there before Azak, and up to his new still-dingy apartment and he feels around in my anus, saying I'll have an enlarged prostate with I'm in my late 50's or 60's, saying he sees no signs of pinworms, saying my change in consistency and color of bowel movements doesn't indicate anything; I still have fairly low blood pressure, my pulse is rather abnormally fast, though I admit to being very slightly excited, and I shit two uncharacteristic rabbit turds into the can which I transfer into the enormous hypodermic-type shit saver, and then leave at 5:30, Azak saying he'll send me the bill and call me tomorrow with the results. Out and catch the bus to Mattachine at 6:15, embarrassed at being late, but Bill STILL isn't there, only Sergio talking on the phone (see next page), and I leave at 9:30, walking home, John coming in later, having left "Magic Flute" in mid-play, I eat, he talks to Sergio Cervetti, we talk, and crawl into bed about 11 pm, talking gently in the dark after the light's put out.
DIARY 2574
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17. He's up and out quickly at 8:15, and I finish "Tomorrow, the Stars" by Heinlein simply because I'm tired of having it around. Type 14 pages through the day, getting back to the trip diary for the first time in ages, and then the rest of the day is spent getting ready for Arthur M.'s hopeful appearance at 10 pm. I scour the tub and wash down a section of the wall that seems to get darker and darker from the reddish algae that grows there, and the piece of the wall that gets so dirty from the heat from the radiator, putting the shower cap away so that it won't be seen, later putting the old rug under the hamper after I exercise one last time on level 3. Then I have lunch and pile all the dishes I don't want to wash into the oven to get them out of the way, listening to the new Moody Blues album to see if it's good enough for tonight, and then sort through all the sex stuff and pile things in order of importance in the dresser drawer to make them easier to look at, and I fuss with the mirror for about an hour trying to get the best angle for viewing, but because the mirror only admits a certain size reflection for the horizontal shots which is just about as big as the direct throw from near the window to the far wall, I set up the projector on the opened table right on the windowsill and it works perfectly. Dust and vacuum, then exercise and shower, and have a late dinner of tuna and cucumbers, and something about it makes me fart and fart as I sit down at the typewriter and begin letters to Claudia and Paul, assuming that I'll hear the buzzer from downstairs above the sound of typing, and I'm finally driven to the medicine chest to dissolve two charcoal tablets in my mouth, washing the black streaks out of my mouth with water, and it doesn't do much good. Finally at 10:15 the buzzer rings and a very high evening begins (see next pages). He leaves at 12:15, a bit later than I'd hoped, and I hope John doesn't call to check where I am, and leave to his place, starved, bringing a candy bar, getting in at 12:55, and he wakes and says they left at 11 and he stayed awake until 12:45 waiting for me, he's interested to hear about Arthur M., but he says he would rather that I'd called him at 12.
DIARY 2578
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18. Wake rather late at 9 and go down on him with Baby Magic for a long period of time until he came, and got out of bed at the astounding time of 10 am. Into the living room to read some articles in the Voice, and we talked about Arthur M. and other things, and it was getting onto 12, for some absurd reason, when I finally left. Debated stopping off at Goody's to buy record jacks for recording "Tristan and Isolde," but decided I had to check what I needed first, and got back to find to my delight that the playback jack would work as a recording jack, and very soon found that stereo recording WOULD record in stereo on BOTH sides of the tape, which in fact HAD 4-track capability. Got that in order by 1:30, reading part of the notes from the album I found I had, and listened to most of the opera while reading the notes, having lunch between times, and then at 5 I put on the Nureyev-Fonteyn "Romeo and Juliet" film, which was lousy from the point of continuity from what's seen on the stage, but the music is still great and Fonteyn comes across even in close-up, though Rudi looked a bit blue-eyed faggoty. For a tremendous coincidence, the Liebestod came during the balcony scene, matching heights and drops of rhythm and ending, for a quite unique occurrence. Watched through to 7:30, cursing because I hadn't put things away---in fact I'd gotten OUT sex stuff and jerked off during the ballet because everyone was so sexy---then as I was eating, JOHN came in and I had to say that Arthur had looked at that sex stuff, and then he angered me by wanting to leave at 8:10, and I had to get ready for tomorrow, and he'd driven his car and wanted to drive, which was an awful mistake, since it took about 20 minutes in the traffic, and we were late for the first piece, which was awful, and the whole THING was awful at the Composer's Forum at the Donnell Library, most of all the question-and-answer session at the end. Sergio and Kenneth and someone straight (!) was there, and later we went to their place to enjoy Zambindo, or something, and Tadzio, their two lovely-natured cats, fruit salad and dry croissants of Sergio's making, and Mae West records and lots of cheap wine until we staggered to John's at 1 am.
DIARY 2579
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19. Out of bed about 9 without touching, saving ourselves for the Tsi-Dun that afternoon, and I went down for the Times and milk for the waffles we had with his fruit soup for covering, and it was quite good, though a bit too watery for that usage. I read the Times while he worked, and then finished the last two awful stories in "Revolt in 2100" and started on "Beyond this Horizon" until 2:30, when I went in to shower (drenching the socks he'd washed and hung inside to dry) and shave (cutting my lip severely in my rush to get ready because Fred had already entered) (called Ed and he said he couldn't go, but thanks anyway, he'd get in touch with me next week) and dress, and out to see Fred with his erect red cock hanging out as he struggled to put on John's metal ring after he'd gotten hard looking at the magazines. Left at 3:20 and got off and onto 1 and 9, then missed the turn-off for 22, and had to get onto northbound 1 and 9, then got off at exit 143 and couldn't find Madison, finally stumbled onto Stuyvesant, had to ask for Allen, got there about 4:30, rang the 258 of apartment 5M at 250 Mt. Vernon (NOT Veron) Place, and got NO answer. DAMN! Piss in the park across the street and Fred smokes on the way back, getting talkative as John gets more annoyed with the road, looking to go way south to the Goethals Bridge and across Staten Island to Brooklyn if he has to, and then I spot 1 and 9 and we go way north on that to get back through the Holland Tunnel. I'm feeling slightly nauseous, maybe from spoiled boeuf bourguignon which he'd heated for a quick snack just before we left, and we're finally back to his place at about 5:45, having wasted two and a half hours doing absolutely nothing. We insist he turn on the radiator, I keep my clothes on for a bit while Fred undresses, and then a very strange sex session starts (see next pages). He's finally out the door at 8, and John wants to see the Coffee Shop on Baltic and Smith, so we're into the car and around numbers of one-way blocks, and pass the striped façade without knocking, down to the end to have pizza at the Italian restaurant at the foot of Baltic Street, then John rings the bell and we're INTO the "Coffee Shop" (see following pages). To his place at 11.
DIARY 2584
MONDAY, DECEMBER 20. He's again up and out of bed without touching me at 8:30 and is practically out the door before I get dressed. I have breakfast and decide that I have to get the mail out, and finish the letter to Claudia that I'd started on Saturday, write to Spectra for three books after I clean out the top drawer with the stuff from the last package, from Malaya, that I got on Saturday, and write an ad advertising myself as "Renaissance Man" for the New York Magazine to take another item off the "To do" list, and even call and get in touch with Louis Love, who's busy with catering until after the holidays, but will get in touch with me then to talk about India, and when I take the six pieces of mail downstairs to mail about noon, I get more mail back, among them a letter from Elaine, which I feel I have to answer right then to keep caught up with correspondence, and I send her the haiku from Bucks County in the fall of '69 as an excuse for writing to her, and send two more Christmas cards to Avi and John Crano, so that when I have lunch about 2 pm, I'm completely caught up AGAIN with correspondence. Then get down to catching up on the diary, actually doing 10 pages on the regular part of it to come up to date from the busy weekend, and doing 13 more pages from the trip diary, and at that point I call Avi and when he calls back I invite Avi and Rolf over tomorrow for Monopoly, and I'd called John and said I'd wanted to go to the Continental, and after pooh-poohing the idea because it was Monday, I said OK, we'll go Tuesday, and it turns out John had gotten all hot to GO Monday, so we agreed to meet at the dirty book shop at 8:30, and I eat moldy pork chops for dinner after exercising for the FIRST time since the trip on level #4, in only 15 minutes, and shaving, and then Avi calls back, so I think to leave early, but leave at 8:30, and THEN forget to put on my contacts, so I'm BACK up to put them on, and get to John on the corner at 8:44, and he's not terribly disturbed by the news that Avi is ALSO going to be at the Continental, and though he said there was trouble over the coupons, I'm angry ahead of time for no reason, for they accept them, and I enter into the hallowed precincts for the first time (see next pages).
DIARY 2595
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21. Wake at 8 and lay cuddling, talking about serial and atonal music even when he goes into the shower, and then he leaves about 9. I have breakfast while reading the interminable back issues of Life Magazine, then type 11 pages, mainly for yesterday's Continental excursion, and do a few odds and ends around the house, and then have an early lunch and get out at 1:30 for the second time around at the Continental (see next pages). Back about 6:45 and quickly put on the remaining pork chop, despite the fact that I have a definite case of diarrhea which smells exactly like the two possibly-spoiled pork chops I had last night, and have dinner and get the living room ready for Avi and Rolf when John comes in at 7:45 with more soap for me, and we chat about his being torn between the I-think-only-barely-possible job with Ford Foundation and as Business Manager of Dance Theater Workshop, and Avi and Rolf enter at 8:20, and we talk for a bit and then get right down to the game of Monopoly, while they busily empty my refrigerator of ginger ale and root beer. John seems quite happy about playing, but then Avi starts pulling into the lead, and John goes into his "I'm such a stupid person" act a number of times when trying to pay off Avi when he lands on him, and Avi very patiently insists on the fair exchange of money, and John tries and tries to amuse him, and succeeds only in breaking me up. I go out with a flurry of spending to Avi, and John quickly follows. It takes him longer to subdue Rolf, and they play very quickly because they want to get home early, and just before they leave at 10:15, John goes into the bedroom and comes out modeling my batik as a sarong and the shawl as a stole, and they say they have to come back to look at the ret of the stuff that I brought back from Europe. John's settled in with wine, and we put the living room back to order and crawl into bed at 11, cuddling a bit with his crotch in my hands, but I'm thinking that bugs could be dropping from his ass onto MY ass, and I use the excuse that it's getting sweaty and move away, and have no trouble getting to sleep because of all the activities of the previous two days.
DIARY 2604
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22. But then I wake early. And I toss. And I turn. But it's still dark out. Finally it gets light and we play around for a bit, but because I haven't come since Saturday, I'm rather desperate to shoot with John, so I stop playing with him and concentrate on my own thing, and he finally brings me off, with, I thought, pains to make it difficult for me. Later he complains that we're too little together, that we don't play around enough sexually, that he's been getting all his sex outside our relationship, and that we're not communicating. I admit I wanted to come, can't understand his not particularly NEEDING to come after extended sex play, wondered why he was getting out of bed without playing, couldn't understand his determination to work ON a schedule when it didn't seem necessary ("I just want to be through with the book," he explained reasonably). So I agreed to go to his place for dinner. Finished "Knulp" in the morning, since I didn't feel like getting right down to typing, and then typed 23 pages, having lunch between times, and then showered after exercising AGAIN at the level #4, this time in 14¼ minutes, and left for John's, meeting Arnie on the subway, at 5:15. Get there at 6, kiss him awake from a nap, find the Mexican place closed, eat at Atlantic House, where the veal cordon bleu is a flop, and we talk about whether I want to go on the tour without HIM, and I explain that the MAIN reason I want to go was because I figured he would WANT me to go without really wanting to FORCE me into it. He said he would judge it by STRICTLY professional considerations, and I said I would do it ONLY on personal considerations, though admitting that I was SURE I could make myself indispensable to DTW if I WANTED to. Picked up Arnie and got to the "Screens" at 8, looking at lovely audience, and it started at 8:40, had a twenty-minute intermission, a ten-minute accident, and was over at 1:30, so it was cut. Individual scenes were VERY striking, acting was generally excellent, but there were constant allusions to things that didn't fit, the action was not at all coherent, and I found myself stupidly observing a number of things, knowing not at ALL where they'd fit in. Left air out of tires of Florida car blocking drive. Bed at 2 am, ugh.
DIARY 2605
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23. Alarm rang at 7:15 and we groggily held until 7:30. Out to the subway together to find the Florida car gone already, and home to finish "Beyond This Horizon" because I don't feel like doing anything that early in the morning. Then a bit of breakfast and out to Unemployment, trying the 18th and 7th Avenue subway as being probably closer than any others. Back home to type 17 pages, and then do the dishes as I have to get the apartment into order before leaving on the trip. But it seems that things never quite go as I had planned them, and where I had meant to pack before the trip before going to Mattachine, I got involved in sorting through the paperbacks to find which ones I'd written in, and added another item to the bottom of the NEW list I made of things to do (which had gratefully gotten down to six items), which was to check through the rest of the souvenirs to see what ELSE I had written on to fill up the space at the bottom of the second page of each day, so that the table of contents of the diary could have one entry for each day, as before. Put lots of things away and went through the refrigerator to find that I could finish up most of the foodstuffs without getting anything else from the grocery except the English muffins I picked up later in the evening to have with a huge supper of three eggs and half-can of Spam, much too much, even when eaten with only a half of a muffin. Plunked the souvenirs I wanted to take along into the suitcase, and then dashed out to the office with many things in my pockets, hoping to get there on time, cursing when I missed a train, and another came quite quickly and I let myself into the dark office at precisely 6 pm. The events of the evening are given, as usual, on the next page. Left promptly at 9:30, Henry Messer volunteering to give me and Jerry Dancey a ride downtown in his coffee Cadillac, and gave us the news that W.H. Auden had consented to have his name on the board of advisors, which is a nice coup. John's just finished eating and I eat and we chat as I pack, and we don't have to leave until 8, so there's time to cuddle a bit and talk about the upcoming long holiday weekend at our parents' homes.
DIARY 2607
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 24. Alarm rings at 7 and I pack as John showers, and we get out to the car at 7:50 and drive west. The weather is cold and gray, and the further we drive, the grayer it gets, until it's drizzling slightly and we're very happy there's so little traffic. Finally get onto the finished portions of Route 80, and it goes very well until we are funneled down into Hackettstown, and we stop in an A&P for some sherry, and then in The Cottage for breakfast, good omelets, and we've killed a half an hour. He drives through the fog-shrouded Delaware Water Gap, and we drive for a couple of hours through dismal Pennsylvania until we're hungry for lunch, stopping first for a john break in refrigerator-like stalls, mine with a hole bored at cock level, when I take over the driving, and then finally at a Holiday Inn, which surprises and pleases by furnishing two free cups of eggnog, highly spiked, which makes the bacon burger taste very good, and I'm glad I didn't get the skinny sardine sandwich that John did. I'm driving again, taking it generally faster than he did, hitting 75 going downhill, slowing to 45, floored, going up the steeper slopes, and just before sunset there's a tiny patch of blue sky over Ohio, and then it gets dark. John's father didn't realize that route 71 didn't have an exit at route 17, but we double back and find it anyway, and thread through Christmas-lit streets to his parents' place at 6:20, not totally dark and chilly, and we're out for John to find that his mother's aged 20 years, and his father's very quiet except when berating her. There are great steaks which John cooks and we all sit together over a very boring dinner, where the Mother constantly complains about how small and un-baronial the new house is, everything's made out of cardboard and too tiny, nothing fits in, not even the two new chairs she keeps the plastic on so that Schatzy won't sit on them. The dog saves the evening with her nosiness and playing with the blanket, and I call home and Mom invites me down, and John agrees I can have the car to go home for Christmas tomorrow, and I frankly confess to him that his parents' obvious sickness has made me terribly uncomfortable. Move down a double bed, watch a prominent, much-shown Don Haines Guidotti at midnight mass, bed at l.
DIARY 2608
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25. Wake about 9 and John joins me for a whispered conversation before we go into the bathroom, where I shower, which he did last night while I finished up TV, and we have breakfast of good eggs and bacon, and I leave at 10:30 for Akron, disgusted with the long slow drive along the recommended Snow Road, knowing I'll come back some other way, and get into Akron with no trouble (except that 176 is gone, replaced by 18, which was somewhere ELSE on the map I had), and drive up the back lawn at 11:30 to see Mom in the bathroom window. In and say hello to everyone, and they open Christmas packages, but I get only one, a book on Morays from Rita, because the other packages have been sent already to New York. Talk about the trip, then start to show them the souvenirs when dinner's ready at 1, and the chicken is good and tender, the baked potatoes butterable, the vegetables tasteless, the Clamato juice a surprise for good taste, and we talk through the dinner without even once coming to blows, and it's quite a success. Then we talk more and watch Mom win the first of her two football bets, and then we're off in the car to take a tour of the new elegant Cascade and the dying downtown, around (TWICE around) the Akron University campus so I can see everything new, including the fire-gutted Buchtel Hall, and then out lost-ways to Grandma Zolnierzak's, and she's healthy looking and chipper and happy to see us, crying at the end "Just like my son" when I leave, after giving each of us envelopes with $5 inside. Then to Marion's and Grandma Vallish isn't talking to Mom, but everyone listens to my tales of India and other countries as I fool with a puzzle I can take apart but not put together, steal glances at the newly-muscled Gary who leaves the room in seeming embarrassment, and then in for a tasty buffet dinner of cold cuts and snacks, talking mistakenly about marijuana, feeling the Midwest conservatism lower its tentacles about me, and then watch films from 20 years ago, and everyone enjoys them and the slides of Germany, and it's 11 when we leave, and on the ride back I DON'T feel like driving to Cleveland, so I phone John and say tomorrow morning, and sleep in Rita's waterbed.
DIARY 2609
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26. Up at 9 for breakfast and more talk, sleeping well in the new-fangled bed, and leave at 10:25 to drive up 77 to the Turnpike for one exit of easy driving, then up 71 to John's directly, getting in at 11:40, and we sit and chat about yesterday, then leave at 12 for the museum, John saying that yesterday was a disaster for him, with his sister bringing and leaving a turkey for their dinner, the niece loving the terrarium, and the three of them lined up in the living room with the TV on, each reading their own materials. Ugh. He was sorry I hadn't come up, but I said I had enjoyed MY family. Find the museum through the traffic for the Cleveland Stadium, and get in first to find there's no message for us to see any of the inside collection, so we wander through the place thoroughly, and they have some nice things, though they took down my favorite Thomas Cole and the Gustave Doré, and they had NO examples of the Jaipur school of miniatures on display, and only a few very nice Kangra pieces, but they had a Tibetan Mandala which was a complete absolute knockout. John said they had a Hoysala sculpture downstairs, but I'd missed it everywhere upstairs. He got a kick out of seeing Borobudur and Prambanan and Pagan on the labels of these museum pieces, so the trip makes a continuing contribution to his life. Out at 3 and get lost a couple of times finding the road to the Criles, and we get there just before 4, the second to arrive after Ulysses, who's worked for the Clinic for 35 years, 18 of them for Dr. Crile, and we found out about their photo-file for remembering names, and then about 4 people started arriving, and the party started in earnest (see next pages). We'd eaten after the museum at a MacDonalds in just 10 minutes flat, and they had lots of drinks, cold roast car-struck venison ("The eyes weren't sunken, so the meat was still good"), lots of nuts and candy, but I was still starved, even with the cheese and crackers, and we stopped at Manners, where I had a smaller-than-I-remember Big Boy, and no dessert, so we went home and John made turkey sandwiches for himself and we had his sister's good pumpkin pie for dessert, and his parents were already in bed, and we went, too, after I finish "Mission from Earth" at 11:30, John in bed at 10.
DIARY 2612
MONDAY, DECEMBER 27. Wake about 8 and I crawl in with him to whisper this morning, suggesting we leave as soon as possible. He eats breakfast while I shave and shower, and I eat while he starts moving furniture around. I finish my lumpy oatmeal and overdone raisin toast, and move one chest of drawers down, another up, beds exchanged in two upper rooms, and various other smaller pieces trundled around. I read a bit from "Dune" while he showered and finished packing, and we left about 11 for his sister's, where we stayed for about 45 minutes, being given a tour of the house, playing with the enormous collie-shepherd dog, looking into the Masterpiece Auction game, and we leave about 11:45, getting back down to town in good time, to stop at Bisson's for things for him to eat for lunch, stop at the office to get the keys for the house and say hello to Anne (who'd sent Mom and same Xmas card I was sending out) and a graying, hard-faced friend who's name I've forgotten. To a bank for a $100 money order for Roger for hash, which I mail after calling Grandma and saying that Marion or Rita should have SAID I wasn't going to Grandma's for dinner that night, but that we were going OUT. We listed to John's recording of "Rhapsody in Blue" when he was 18 at Ohio State (for two pianos and 300-voice chorus, yet), and then have bouncy sex on the waterbed, and Rita later says we should look at the rafters underneath, which we don't do. Then to Grandma's, and forget to take her pecans, but drink her strong drinks, talking nicely, and Helen and Jimmy and Dixie barge over, and we go THERE for talk and John's deflating comments against schools and degrees of any kind, just as Helen showed her Doctoral entry in Who's Who in American Women, and Jimmy in Who's Who in American Administrators. Out at 5:15 and walk back home, where Mom's thankfully talking to me ("If you tell her (Grandma), I won't GO tonight.") and we quickly wash and drive out to Lil Joe's for a riotous dinner (see next page) and drive back to see the 5000 light Christmas decorations, then pass Henry's house, not being able to see anything, and get home, where Rita flakes out in bed and has to be dragged off for John and me, who get to bed before 11.
DIARY 2614
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28. Alarm rings at 7:10 and we're slowly up, John complaining about how cold he was through the night, not sleeping well, and getting up to go to the john and to put on another blanket. Mom makes coffee and toast for us, and we leave just at 8, driving down Exchange and up North Main to the Turnpike, gasping at Rex Humbard's new tower, and drove until we came to a trucker's restaurant about 9:30 for breakfast, and there were a few dark-faced sharp-featured Philippino-looking drivers who made the stop worthwhile. I took over driving after 80 miles out, and we agreed we wouldn't stop for lunch, so 200 miles later we stopped for a piss call and he took over until we got to the Hackettstown A&P for groceries and steaks for dinner, and I took over again. The weather cleared, thankfully, and not only didn't it rain, but the sun came out for about an hour, showing some nice contrasts between white branches of trees and brooding distant gray-headed clouds. I raced on down route 80, not turning off onto 46, and so we were directed to the George Washington Bridge as the traffic got heavier and heavier as it neared 5, and I raced across in record time, hitting 83 in one case before the car shimmied prohibitively, whereas John got a quiver and stopped accelerating at 75. Into town and he shivers while I park the car right across the street, pick up the mail, sadly with no packages at all, so I can't figure what happened to the Christmas gifts, but there was a notice that I went to the Post Office to pick up, but it was only an insured package of "Acid House" returned from Vantage Press. He soaked in a hot tub as I read the mail, and then we put on the steaks, sad that I forgot to get wine, and eat, then read a bit and get to his place at 7:30, where he reads HIS mail and unpacks, after we looked at the downed dead tree in front of his apartment, and I read more of "Dune" while he gets things together, and then decide against a bath since my hair and body are so dirty, so I shower and am drying myself when he comes in saying, "Want to smoke?" and I say "Yes" immediately, since I'd been thinking of asking HIM if we could. Start at 9 (see next page) and probably sleep about 10.
DIARY 2616
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29. Wake about 7:30 and start cuddling, and AGAIN we start sucking and Baby Magicing away, and both of us come again, to lay panting next to each other, joking about how LONG (about ten hours) it's been since we'd last come. John showers and I say I'm not going to, much to his surprise, and he starts to work while I sit reading "Dune" until 10:15 (see next page), and then call Arnie to ask if I can come over to get a TV listing for the week. He says OK and he talks about his car breaking down in Passaic and other prosaic subjects, and I leave about 11, getting home about 11:30, and I start typing, breaking for lunch, and after I get caught up on the diary I sort through all the souvenirs from the trip to find what I'd taken notes on, and arrange them in nearly chronological order to facilitate typing, and then get back to work, finishing 34 pages in all before I'm finished. There were interruptions with calls by Azak and John and Marty, but essentially the whole day was spent typing, and I felt very tired after doing it, including the time it took to put some of the pages into the final volume just to get them out of the way. Then I exercise, at level #3 in order to get back in condition after being away a week, and I'm happy to see that it takes only 10 1/3 minutes. Then John comes in and I eat dinner while he reads back copies of Life, and then he says he's going out for a walk, since there's nothing else to do, and I read the Voice while he's gone, then shower and shave and brush my teeth, and he's back at 10:30, saying that if he has nothing he wants to read, nothing to work on, he always goes out for a walk, and that he has NO interest in ANYTHING sedentary in an apartment, that it must involve PHYSICAL activities, whether it be cooking or exercising or having sex, but just SITTING makes him nervous and fidgety. I say that when I get a job, I'll be spending LOTS of evenings in my apartment, since I then NEED the time to keep things up to date, and say that might be a problem area, and he says we could tackle it when it arose. Finally decide to get to bed at 11:45, John as something to DO to end the evening, I as something that HAS to come, unwillingly.
DIARY 2617
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30. Wake and cuddle a bit, and look to see it's 9 am with John due at the Ford Foundation at 10. He's up and showered and out by 9:30, and I get ready for a busy day of outdoor things, getting out at 10:15 for unemployment, then downtown to find the mirror place that Arnie was talking about, the Canal Street General Store, and buy 50 mirrors for 2¢ apiece, and a Timothy Leary LSD record for 25¢, then search for Hoover vacuum parts and a calendar but have no luck, then go down to register for jury duty, being told that I'll be notified in March or April, the earliest times available, then buy underwear that I need badly, look into some book shops, and it's raining so hard I decide to ride uptown and avoid the bank, stopping only at Bookmasters for another Heinlein book, only 5 left to get, and "The Soft Machine" in hardback (ha) for 59¢, and walk home sopping wet at 1 to put all my treasures away, then type a bit, have lunch, and settle down to typing again, being able to get only 11 pages done through the day, having taken time to exercise, also. John calls and says that Mr. Kapp doesn't offer him a job, and explains at length why the Ford Foundation can't give support to modern dance, but maybe it's only because Mr. Lowrey, who's in charge of the whole place, doesn't LIKE modern dance, and he suggests that John write to him, and THAT seems like the direction his getting a job would take. Feel sorry that he didn't get the job directly, but he's worried in earnest now, since he's figured that by the time he pays his rent for February, he'll have only $100 in the bank. I get out at 5:30 for Mattachine, having to come back up from the subway steps because I forgot the key to the door, and get there for another interesting evening (see next page). Back just before 10, and John says that he'll accept the job Virgil Thomson has for him: cataloging all his personal collection of books which will occupy an endowed special room at the NYU fortress-library, and he'll work only three hours a day for $100 a week, not bad, and he'll accept the editing job from Washington for ANOTHER bit, and accept the $3000 grant to DTW for a half-time manager, and he's delighted. Good. TV on Everest and bed at 11.
DIARY 2619
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31. He's up during the night to make three lists, and we wake and cuddle and I get out the vibrator and play ever so obliquely with him, but he comes very quickly in three great spurts, saying he didn't know what I was doing, but it was immediately effective. He's dressed and out and I begin typing, finishing with twenty pages very quickly, but then I'm hungry, so I have lunch and then I put everything together and get to the bank to cash two unemployment checks, stop at the good bank and get yet ANOTHER back-dated food stamp coupon cashed, and it seemed he even KNEW about its out-of-datedness, since he marked something on the card, and I feel like asking him, next time, if he'll take even the OLD form ones from July and August. If he will, why don't I GIVE them to him? Then to Bookmasters and find that Edward Carpenter hasn't written anything that appears in paperback, three of Heinlein's titles have vanished, and the only two left are from Dell, buy copies of "Magic Mountain" and "Cosmic Consciousness" and then go to the store to meet Arno and chat about his upcoming quiet New Year's Eve, with Kenneth visiting his children from a former marriage, and I get wine and get the mail, looking through The River and Scientific American, and then John called to say that I should be at his place at 6:30 for drinks and we'd go to Gage and Tollner's restaurant, which sounds fine, so I shower and shave and fix the apartment up without having time to do such things as exercise and the dishes, and get out at 5:45 to sit underground for ten stalled minutes while fantasies of atomic attacks (from the rumble of subways overhead) and pre-strike stalling techniques make me uncomfortable, but I get to John's at 6:35 and we drink lots of champagne and I tell him I felt nicely toward him during the past year, and then we walk to Gage and Tollner's, getting there early and waiting for a table, and the shrimp cocktail is as good as it should be for $2.85, the chicken ala Maryland tender and tasty with the maple-syruped corn fritters, and John loves his clammy soup and scallops, and we're back to the apartment to get the car and drive to 22 Charles for the yearend party (see next page).