1972 1 of 8
DIARY 2621
SATURDAY, JANUARY 1. Wake during night to three explosions, then about 10 to cuddle and come and up with the considerable surprise of discovering that it's nearly 11. Read the Times and have just juice and coffee for John, and cereal for me, for breakfast, and then we walk up to the Beacon Theater at a fast clip through the brisk air, John insisting on wearing only a pullover and a sweater, jamming his hands into his cold pockets, for a lousy "Friends" with the easiest birth on film: she didn't even bother with the afterbirth, and a good "Prime of Miss Jean Brody" with Maggie Smith in a wonderful Joan Sumner-like role, who seems to start a loveable heroine and end up a damnable villain, which makes for a thoughtful movie. The balcony is closed, so there's nothing extracurricular on the curriculum. Out at 6:30 and phone Avi, who says to come up, and we see their Christmas tree and new white-painted piano and rearranged living room, plus Rolf's new black-pink and silver bedroom with terribly unstable inflatable chairs, and we talk about the holidays and hepatitis and other jollies, and then decide to play French scrabble, and Rolf amazes us all by winning by a large margin, and John's happy about not ending up last. We'd finished their booze cabinet of eggnog and whiskey and banana liquor and chocolate-cherry (which produces more of a malt than a "togetherness" that the banana did), and then they got out the Boursin cheese and the chicken liver paté and the crackers and crackers and crackers, and we all ate away, but at 10 we were still hungry when we left, so we walked home in the even colder weather and I broiled pork chops, and we had them with wine, and I added peas and English muffins, and by the time we were finished at 11, we both felt dizzied enough with the wine to think about getting to bed. Chatted about John's new job and how he'll be making a living for the next six months, and then I get into the shower and brushed my teeth and John sat around a bit longer with the Times, and then we got into bed just before 12, cuddling nicely and speaking to each other closely after the lights were turned off, and again it just felt very nice to be near him, having someone to talk to, someone to share an evening with, someone to wake up next to the next morning: loverly.
DIARY 2622
SUNDAY, JANUARY 2. Up about 9 and I don't feel like doing anything, so again apply the vibrator to John and he comes with enthusiasm, and then he's up to shower and I read the Times (as I did NOT do yesterday), and we sit around reading, since I've put him onto "The Year 2000" and he's finding lots of ideas for his letter to the head of the Ford Foundation, and about noon he asks if I wouldn't mind coming to Brooklyn, so we're into the car, finding that it's been broken into by the lacerated rubber stripping around the open right side window, and the tissues and paper towels strewn about, and though the keys were under the fender, they didn't find them, though they seemed to have looked in the ashtray for them, and though the tools were out they didn't take any, the pen and various small things were still in the glove compartment, and everything looked alright with the battery in the back, so he was rather pleased they didn't get away with anything. Cruise 42nd Street to see that "French Connection" is playing there with another film, and then to his place to sit down to read "Dune," which gets more and more interesting, and then he fries up 3/4 pound hamburger patties for lunch, which taste good, and then he goes into the bedroom for "2000" and a nap while I continue with "Dune," and then at 4 he's up and I soak the stamps while he washes the dishes, and then he has salmon while I have nothing and we drive out to 42nd Street again, stopping in the deli for a mediocre pastrami for a high $1.55, and into a sex shop just to pass a few minutes, then into the smoke-bomb-scented crowded third balcony for "Doomsday Voyage" a complete nothing with a nothing Joseph Cotton, and then down to the even more crowded downstairs for a zippy "French Connection," though it hardly deserves to be rated among the best of all times---there are still nice things in it, like the ugliness of its "hero" and the fact that the "French Connection" himself actually got away after he shot someone else by mistake. Out at 11:30 and home by 12, and I take a quick shower while he fixes up things around the apartment, and crawl into bed to have him cuddle close to me and say "I love you," with an obvious smile on his face in the darkness, and again it feels awfully good to be going to bed next to John A., my lover.
DIARY 2623
MONDAY, JANUARY 3. Alarm at 8 and Baby Magic persistently till both come at 9. He's up to get ready for his first day of work with Virgil Thomson, while I bustle about sorting out the stamps that I'd soaked yesterday, putting them into country stacks and slipping them into the too-few envelopes. Out about 9:30 to the subway with him, and get home to find the mail isn't even distributed yet. Have breakfast and get down to typing after looking through the Times entertainment section, and being bothered by a scotoma (and I just learn from the dictionary that its plural is scotomata, so that "stigmata" is the plural of STIGMA!), which I tell myself is coming more frequently, and I should keep note of them so I can see how often they DO occur, and then I find about 1 pm that I missed the appointment for "To Tell the Truth" and I try to telephone them, but there's no answer. Back to typing, then have lunch and back to typing again, after taking a bit of time off for washing socks, and before I know it, John comes in at 4:30 to shower and sit around and read, so I have to get out to the grocery store, where there are long lines that don't let me out until 5:15, and pick up absolutely nothing from the mail, and where ARE all the goodies that are supposed to be coming (responses from Porcelain and stamps from Bill, cock books from Spectra and packages from India, the supposed Christmas gift from Mom and the rest of the Christmas card returns)? Continue typing, getting well into Nepal with a good feeling, and then exercise through a painful level 4 in less than 15 minutes, cook steaks that John's already trimmed, talking about the tie necessary for dinner tomorrow at the Top of the Park, and about Virgil Thomson's incessant keeping of original drafts, first typescripts, revised copy, proofs, and finished copies of letters, articles, even invitations and critiques and columns mentioning his name, and we have a nice chatty dinner. He's off to the Cubiculo and I'm down to typing to finish the 30 pages for the day, then shower and shave for the first time since Saturday, and John's back at 10:30, so we sit and chat until 11, when I watch "Moon Over Miami" with a very pretty Betty Grable and many too many songs that are completely out-of-date. He's to bed at 12 and I follow him just before 1.
DIARY 2624
TUESDAY, JANUARY 4. Wake very tired at 8, and laze and touch languidly, not hard, and then he crawls out of bed to shower and I'm up to try again to call the TV show "To Tell the Truth" and get told to come in tomorrow, and forget about watching it at 9:30. Get down to typing again, but it seems like an awful strain on my shoulders, and I take time off to read a number of Life magazines, finally getting down to only two behind, and when I go down at noon for the mail, delighted to find another Tsi-Dun coming up, I recall there's not one today since last week's was a double issue, so I'll probably be caught up by Tuesday next. Type more and have lunch, then type more, and finish 30 pages finally. Then John comes in just after 6 and I exercise and shower, and we're out to the Top of the Park for him to have oysters and veal and chocolate cake, while I have hors d'oeuvres and flounder stuffed with small shrimp and ricotta cheese and cheesecake, and the only unique thing about the place was a large basket of vegetables with a curry sauce that was pretty good. Back to rate the restaurant on a rating scale we come up with, and both make it right in the middle, but fairly far down on the list for "repeatability." Back to watch "My Name is Man" on TV with the penis-covers of Indonesian New Guinea, and then zip in and out of TV until 11 and "Down Argentine Way" as the second of Betty Grable week on TV. This isn't very good, though John smokes and smiles his way through it until 12:15, very late for him, before he goes to bed, and I'm not very interested in seeing the rest of them, which is fine, since he said we'd end up at his place tomorrow night, and Friday night will probably see us at his place, too. Drink some of the eggnog that I bought yesterday, and read bits of "Kathakali" that he gave me for Christmas. Also wanted to answer Lisa Bieberman, but couldn't find her letters, so I went through all the letters to be filed and filed them in about 90 minutes, a good job done that had been accumulating since the middle of 1970, and I'm glad that John didn't come in while I was doing them, or he'd have made fun of my filing system for letters. Movie over at 12:40 and I get wearily to bed.
DIARY 2625
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5. Wake early and cuddle sensuously and come both by 8:15. Then he's out by 9:15, and I've dialed the TV to "Diane," taking time off to watch "To Tell the Truth" and eat breakfast, and when it's over at 11 I take off into the SNOW, the first of the season, which is falling, up to an inch on the rooftops, and get to Park and 53rd and see Roseanne, where I fill out a form, the most spectacular part being the travel, and it only takes about half an hour, but the prizes aren't too great either: a minimum of $25 and a maximum of $166. Stop at the bank to cash the food stamp coupon, but the head of it isn't there, and they don't have any $2 folders, so I can't do it at all. Cold and wet and home to get a letter from Elaine and pay some bills before starting to type about 12:30, then stop for lunch, then get back to typing, and feel that it's going very slowly and painfully, but the more I think about it the worse it gets, until I simply stop and send a page-long letter off to Lisa Bieberman, and then I exercise painfully and shower, washing my hair, and eat dinner and call Arno to meet downstairs at 7:35 for the Mattachine meeting. He's willing to have his name and office telephone number available to the staff for referrals the next morning for those cases that really seem to need professional help, and he assures me that giving a person a name and number to call is effectively helping them, and the fact that it might have to wait until the morning won't make much difference to them. Find that New Danny's has refused (because of new management) to allow Mattachine to meet there, so the Village Independent Democrats have offered their place, though it's junky, the microphone is a pain, and they talk on the telephone through the notices by cute John Hood, the moderator, and the awful ramblings of Roz Regelson, and I hope my lectures are more interesting than her names-in-the-news, most of them against us, scattershot technique that seems to exhaust everyone. John and I leave right after it's over at 10, Arno having left earlier, and we try the Spike, but it's only got two people in it, the Eagle is restricted to "Leather, Rubber, and Western," the Triangle is empty, so we're home to Grand Cru wine and popcorn, chatting on the sofa; bed at 11:45.
DIARY 2626
THURSDAY, JANUARY 6. Alarm rings just before 8, and I start flapping John's cock about, and figure just to play with him and take HIM up on his idea that he doesn't have to come, but the play goes on and on and then he says "I have to go soon," and starts what I think is straining for climax, so I do him, and on checking with him later, find he DID want to come, so it's for the best. We leave together and I watch the last half of "To Tell the Truth," and the lying job is harder than I thought, and it looks like the MOST LIKELY PROFIT from the job is $25 or $33 or $50, but I haven't seen one higher than that yet, and it's usually Kitty Carlysle who gets it right. Then I have breakfast and go down to unemployment and come back, shopping in Woolworth's for a shower cap and buy "Sex for Boys" by Wardell Pomeroy and read his chapters, boring, on Homosexuality and Masturbation, and then get down to typing, have lunch, and then type some more, but all I can do through the day is 17 pages. Also, sadly, before typing I just felt like coming, so I got out the pornography and pulled myself off, shooting up onto my chest as if I hadn't come in a long time. Then I shit and it's a bright red splotch on the toilet paper, which shakes me up, so I don't even exercise today, since I figure it has to be that. So my calendar of messed-up events is getting crowded "Scotoma on Monday, bleeding from anus on Wednesday and Thursday." Ugh. Try calling Gladys and Joan and Fred Courtney, but no one seems to be answering their phone. Want to call Ed Berger and Louis Love, but tell myself to wait for next week. By the time it's 5 pm there's no time to shower, so I shave and brush my teeth before leaving at 5:30 to walk up to Mattachine (see next page). Leave late at 9:40 and get in at 10, and John's there waiting for me, watching TV, and the radiator is on for the cold evening outside, which makes the air hot and dry, and I cook hamburger which tastes great because I'm starved, but I have onions on it, and I smell them until the following day. John smokes again and we watch "Pin-Up" with Betty Grable WITHOUT Don Ameche and Charlotte Greenwood, and they left a reel out somewhere. Bed at 12:30.
DIARY 2628
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7. Because I didn't shower yesterday, I feel completely uncomfortable when John goes down on me, and I don't feel like getting hard and so I get out the vibrator in self-defense and do him, and he loves it, and then he's up and out. I get down to typing, finally doing the LAST of the notebooks from the trip, and now the awful task of RECREATING the last 30 days of the trip has to be done, and I start by going through the hotel and restaurant slips and putting them in order, and make out a sheet of framework for the days, so that I don't get the framework wrong and end up with a day or two too many or too few. Watch "Lavender Hill Mob" in the morning to see Audrey Hepburn, but Marty calls to ask if I'll testify in court abut Jerri's drinking or promiscuity, since she's decided to fight for Chris. I say I can't do that, glad that she DIDN'T tell me anything, but miss the bit that Audrey Hepburn's in, so it must be somewhere in the first twenty minutes, unless they cut her out. Then John comes for dinner, laughing at my sorting through the trip stuff, and we have steaks here and get down to the Cubiculo for Joel Benjamin, and he's totally awful, and the troupe is just very sad: the costumes are ripped and dusty, the music is terrible, taped from scratchy records; his choreographic style is an awful mélange of dozens of types, none of them good, and I observe to John that I finally DO see something very dreadful about Bejart: if anyone without Bejart's GENIUS tries to COPY him, the results will be absolutely horrendously tasteless. We sit through a few things, liking the only other fellow he has in his troupe, but with the horrible chattering audience at our backs, we decide to leave at intermission. John talks to a cellist friend of his, saying again that this is a married couple that I'd love meeting, and we get home to watch the rebroadcast of Edward R. Murrow's obituary from 9:30 to 10:30, then watch "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" with Catharine of Aragon until midnight, and it's interesting enough for us both to watch it without once [and here the typewriter broke down, and now I'm doing this on Tuesday, the 18th] nodding toward sleep, and then we go to bed.
DIARY 2629
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8. Up late with good sex, and we're out of bed about 10. Do nothing until 11:30, and then we're down to DTW where we chat with a very coolly-attractive Jack Moore. Ann Cleveland starts at 12:15 with "Fibres" with nicely thematic percussive hand beats, otherwise not striking. Then at 12:30 Pricilla Colville does "Rut" with beautifully paced feelings of coming out of an encompassing costume, nicely done, imaginative use of materials, but John says Jeff said she ALWAYS does things like that. Then Linda Schoenfeld choreographed "Intervals" for two other dancers, and they have a number of interesting images, but it doesn't coalesce as a whole. Then I'm across 8th to have a double cheeseburger and a malt, and buy instant coffee and beer for DTW, and at 1:30 Randi does "Circus" in a nice looped dress balloon, nothing extraordinary, and thankfully she wants to dance, not choreograph. Then Diane Boardman does "Love Story" which is quirky, idiomatic, and whackily original, and she's fabulous even as a beginner. Diane Ray does a poor "Personal; Space" to an impressive record by Joan Friedman, but the dance doesn't match. Bill Setters' "Welling Space" has bits and pieces of oddments, no coherent wholeness, muddily mystical, and he's not even much to look at. Diane Shere does something very repetitive and boring. At 3:30 Julia Huang's "Butterfly" has good moments, quite diffuse and uncentered. Irene Miltzer is painstakingly slow, of NO interest, and Joy Javits has "CASPS" (Child, Adolescent, Student, Professional and Sophistication) with group of five bright ones, some dreadful, some pleasant, some entirely mediocre. Through at 6 and Jeff is dreadfully disappointed, so much so that they might not even HAVE a spring season with these tryouts. Drive to John's and have dinner at the Mexican restaurant, deciding to rate that, too, and we're back to his place to debate what to do, and decide to see what the new Club Baths are like (see following pages). Get there about 10 and drive back across the bridge fairly early at 12:30, John surprised to find it still so early, but he'd decided to leave when I said I was ready. Fall, clean, limp, into bed about 1 am.
DIARY 2634
SUNDAY, JANUARY 9. John's up while I lounge in bed, not feeling like rising. I settle down to read the Times, and John does some work on the stuff he has home from Virgil Thomson, since he's going out of town for a week for a retrospective of his works in Connecticut, so John will have to work at home all this week. When I'm through with the paper, John's about ready for lunch, and he has salmon, which I don't care to have, so I postpone eating until I get home about 2, and then I settle down and finish reading "Dune," which is a fabulous novel, worthy of the prizes it's won, and I start immediately into "Dune Messiah," but it's just not as good starting as the other was: it seems "Dune" took enormous thought about characterization and plotting and story convolutions, but the follow-up seems rushed, and the fact that the print is quite a bit larger and the novel only half as many pages helps disillusion me, too. By then it's almost dark, and I don't feel like doing anything else, so I just putter around the house until John gets in about 8, and he's rather demanding to do something, and since we want to watch "Henry VIII" at 9, there's an hour to kill, and I look at the TV schedule and "Great American Dream Machine" is on, so we watch that, I complimenting the Bunin cartoons for the linking motifs, and some of the segments are good, but others are quite boring. Then Anne Boleyn goes through her paces, and Dorothy Tutin is too well known to be a convincing Anne, and there are too many familiar effects and lines "I have such a thin neck" for one, and the story is just too familiar to be lively. It's over at 10:30 and I shower and come out ready to smoke, so John goes in and showers, and I ask if he minds if I put music on, and he says "Of COURSE I don't mind," which strikes me as ANOTHER way I had him down for the opposite of something I liked, whereas he really LIKED it (as he likes to look at pornography magazines and slides). So I put on the new Moody Blues record and we smoked about two pipe fulls, since I wanted to get really high and swing way out, but it ended up something different from that (see next page) and we collapsed, exhausted, into bed about midnight, stoned.
DIARY 2636
MONDAY, JANUARY 10. He's up and out, but I STILL feel quite stoned, lying in bed until I have to lock the door behind him. Then still don't feel like doing anything, so I'm up again to have breakfast and only read, this time finishing "Dune Messiah," which is rather uncomfortable to read, and I'm feeling terrible these few days, probably from a combination of lack of exercise, constant sitting with my reading, and lack of anything terribly compelling to do. I simply don't feel like sitting down at the typewriter, probably out of avoidance of getting down to the un-notebooked days of the trip which have to be done soon, hopefully before these temporary pages reach 200. I spend lots of time sitting around thinking of nothing, and a few of these days have gotten out the pornography and jerked off, simply, I think, in order to have something to do to occupy my mind. I don't even look at the list of things to do, just not having the energy to do anything. Various times through this week I determined to exercise, but it just left me feeling very tired, feeling that there's nothing being gained in energy levels, but that something may be lost. Exercising isn't as vitalizing as it used to be: it's a drudgery that leaves me feeling more listless after I'm finished with it, instead of exhilarated. Eat dinner and get out at 2 pm to the offices of Goodson-Todman, and sit in the lobby with two guys, one of whom is obviously Doc Smith, world's champion camel racer, and the other is Darrell Griffith, who's Englishy and smooth in a Rick Winter sort of way, and there are slight times of eye contact that suggest that we might become friends. Sit with Doc Smith for an hour and a half while he passes around photos and information, and we're to be in costume, and we get receipts for the male Sarah Coventry jewelry we'll be getting as prizes. Leave with Darrell and I suggest we stop off for a drink, but he has to be somewhere, so we say we'll see each other tomorrow. Back home and laze around, eating again, until it's time to watch an amusing "Hollywood, the Dream Factory," with tongue-in-cheek commentary, very coolly, by Dick Cavett. John's in about 10, we chat, he boozes, we get to bed at 11.
DIARY 2637
TUESDAY, JANUARY 11. I may have done him this morning with the vibrator but since it's over a week ago, I don't remember. How much BETTER it is if I keep this up to date, except that when I'm so far behind I tend to give a GENERALIZED view of things, whereas when I do it daily, I tend to get bogged down in minutiae, so I suppose it evens out. The TV show is much on my mind, and I get through the morning, one of these times actually CATCHING UP on the Life Magazines, so that the stack is down to zero, and I can now start catching up on the more bulky Scientific American issues. Talk to some people over the phone, too, and through the days get a few lightweight pieces of mail out, including a few inquiries for "Acid House," which I still might as well try to push, since I'M around and IT'S around, and there's not much else to do, and I WOULD like to see it in print in SOME form. Watch the first few moments of "King of the Gamblers" at 12:30 on TV to see what Buster Crabbe looks like, but he goes under the name of Larry, has a dapper mustache [NO, this is TOMORROW], looks very handsome in the face, but has such a dressed-up role it's fairly sure he won't be getting UNdressed, so I shut it off at 12:50 and dash down to Radio City for the TV taping (see next pages). Out of the bar at 7 and dash home to get out of my contacts and get some money into my pockets, and subway down to the new French restaurant La Chaumiere, and John's not there yet and hasn't made reservations, but then he strolls up and we sit down to a fabulous menu and an even more fabulous meal, except that the Nid d'Hirondelle didn't quite fit together: the meat/meat/egg centerpieces were perfectly done, but the toughness of the meat outer coating sort of repelled the lovely sweetish sauce, and it really didn't go together in taste, and the perfect MELDING of the ingredients and tastes in meat and sauce didn't take place, and the mousse au pernod was not entirely successful, being too extremely delicate of taste, so it's not PERFECT, but it's certainly spectacular, and we both agree we'd like to go back. John gets a ticket, poor boy, we check the Studio bookshop and the Westbank bar and the trucks, and home to bed.
DIARY 2641
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12. We cuddle, but again I stay in his bed while he's up and working, and then I leave about 10 after reading the Village Voice to give the mail a chance to be sorted, and get home to find literally nothing there, and the mail's been a terrible disappointment recently, having nothing that I really want to see in it, except for a copy of the River with night things from Elaine, and the last little pieces of Christmas cards, including a lovely one from Gilles, saying how much he enjoyed his stay in Kandy with us, and that brings me to a "received" size the same as last year's, so I figure that's as many as I need. Joan calls about 12 from Alex's, and agrees she wants to see "Broomsticks and Bedknobs" at 1, so it's NOW that I watch "King of the Gamblers" (see page T137) for a bit and gobble down lunch of tuna fish and meet Joan in front of the theater at 1. In for the moderately amusing show, but it's certainly no "Mary Poppins," and the efforts to MAKE it one are obvious. The stage show is positively dreadful, everyone's bored stiff with singing "Silent Night" the Flying Waynes aren't there at all, and the Rockettes looked bored as hell, only the two male chesty dances worth watching at ALL. Certainly not worth watching ANY of it a second time. Out before 4, Joan moaning about how having two wisdom teeth pulled has killed her, and I get back home to feel like doing nothing but read "Have Space Suit---Will Travel," which is pleasant but eclectic, and then watch "The Last Tribes of Mindanao" from 8-9 (see next page) and "The Second Annual Super Comedy Bowl" with some very gay skits as per "Odd Couple," and a lot of blubbery flesh, not much of it attractive, though a few of the faces and sheer bulks are worth looking at. Finish at 10 and subway to John's, since he doesn't feel like coming to my place, and I figure I'm evening up the evenings spent in both places, and try to tell him about all the thoughts from "Mindanao," but he cuts me off immediately with his OWN observations about Virgil Thomson's saving everything, and more information about Dance Theater Workshop, and I'm miffed, but guess he's just not interested in Mindanao thoughts.
DIARY 2643
THURSDAY, JANUARY 13. Forgot my keys last night (and had a lovely coincidence last night: John wanted to see "Hotel China" with Jeff, and he was quite certain I wouldn't want to see it, which was true, so he went, saying I should go to his place and he'd be quite late, maybe even 11:30. When I realized I'd forgotten my keys I was thankful it wasn't bitterly cold, since I saw myself sitting outside until he got back, and, lo, he called to me from the street, having been on the same subway I was, and he let me into the apartment I would have been locked out of had he not chosen to leave at the first intermission, saying "He'd seen what there was to see."), but I wanted to stay at John's until time to go to the unemployment office, so he gave me his spare set and went off, and I read "Sex and Boys," pretty awful by a talk-down-to-them Wardell Pomeroy, and then subwayed to stand in line for a still noncommittal employment person for the seventh check, still going very nicely. Then home and plan out the quite elaborate day, deciding that I couldn't stand the contacts in my eyes all through the movie AND Mattachine and the orgy, so I'd go early to the movie and get back home to maybe have dinner or pack a dinner so that I wouldn't have to stall too long between leaving Mattachine early and getting to the orgy late. So I have lunch about 1:45, actually getting into the first of the Scientific Americans, that for February, 1971, so that means I have a whole year there, since January, 1972, is now at the bottom of the stack, and I don't want it to get any WORSE than that, and then I quickly subway down to the Elgin for "Les Mistons" and "The Wild Child" at 2:10 (see next pages). Out at 5 and subway up to my place to shower and shave and put in my contacts and get out at 5:45 to subway up to 72nd and get a very expensive ($1.50) but very tasty pastrami sandwich (sadly ruined by my agreement that he put cole slaw ON the sandwich, next time it should be in a cup on the side), and get to Mattachine at 6 (see following page), and then leave almost exactly at 9 to walk the number of blocks to C. Campbell's Tsi-Dun apartment in the Alden Hotel on 82nd at 9:15 (see subsequent pages), and subway home at 11:30 pm.
DIARY 2650
FRIDAY, JANUARY 14. It may be that John does me, since I'm not celibate through the whole week, and many days I wandered with the tackiness of dried Baby Magic through my crotch. I read "Ancient Sculptures from India" as part of my plan to lessen the number of books on the "To Be Read" shelf, and get interested in the locations of all the great places for museums. That gets me going on a comparative list of the places we've SEEN in India and the places YET to see in India, and I look through the temple book to get the OTHER places listed, and end up with almost 40 places we've SEEN and almost 50 places YET to see, and I idly jot down an itinerary for the REST of the "Next-India" trip, then start making lists of OTHER trips that John and I would like to take, and then decide to see how this would fit into my idea of seeing SOME place from EACH of the Atlas pages, so I get that down and figure to jot down what YEAR I first saw each section of the world, getting out my vacation list to assist my memory, and the whole thing takes well into the afternoon of the most lovely listing and figuring and counting and tabulating and checking, and I only have 18 pages left to see, with "Next-India" hopefully clearing up five of them, and other listed trips doing the rest in rather rapid succession, ending with only five pages of "don't know when I'll see them," with two for northern Brazil, one for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and one each for Manitoba and Alaska. But certainly only ten more trips will take care of ALL the pages, which is pleasantly well traveled. Then, after lunch, sit down to type page T128 and there's a terrible whirring clank from the typewriter, and now I'll get even FURTHER behind than the week I'm NOW behind. But can't type anything, so I read "Splendours of the East" to divest the shelf of another book, throw away Christmas cards after charting them, eat dinner and direct John to the ART theater, but HE SAYS I TOLD HIM TO GO TO THE CORRECT ONE, and I absolutely break up when he tells me that he did NOT understand that I'd directed him to the WRONG one! We're in the middle of "Klute" which is good, and see "THX 1138," which is horrid, full of scientific holes, and Jane Fonda IS good in "Klute." Subway to John's for bed.
DIARY 2651
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15. Cuddle and don't have sex in the morning, and John's reading "The Year 2000" to get ideas for his letter to Ford Foundation's Lowry about his need to support modern dance, so I get home for breakfast since John had no food at his place, and decide since I can't type that this is a good time to get to stamps, so I get them all out, including the ones I soaked at John's quite a while ago, and decide that rather than putting in USED stamps and replacing them with NEW ones, I'll have to add the ones I still have from the trip, so I do those first, eating lunch after I put all the mint ones in, then I get to the used ones, and they go rather quickly, and when I'm working in the stamp drawer I spill the box of "XX Used US" all over the place, messing up the order that I'd put them in with, and decide that after I get all the stamps away, I'll have to sort all those things into the regular boxes, clearing out another of the plastic four-partitioned boxes for the FOURTH section of the used US series, and get those all sorted out among themselves and interpolated in with my old filing system, running into difficulties when I don't remember which way I face the vertical stamps, to the right or to the left, and have to swing some of the left-heads back around to be right-heads, putting a vertical stamp in the front of each partition so it'll be easily checkable in the future. Redo most of the smaller sized issues, too, to make them more nearly in the catalog number order, and finish just at 8 pm, so that I can watch "All in the Family" again, not as good as before, and watch a deliciously evil Bette Davis in "Madame Sin" until 10 pm, eating sausage during it, and shower and shave during intermissions getting ready to go to Eddie's, which was to start at 9, but John said he'd be driving there about 10, so I decided I could get there late, too. Out to make perfect subway connections to Hector's at 49-02 21st Street, right at the Hunter's Point subway exit, and the party is considerably enlivened since I decide to take a pipe and grass along, which John surprisingly didn't do, and the whole evening is rather strange (see next pages). Drive to my place at 1 am.
DIARY 2654
SUNDAY, JANUARY 16. Laze while John makes coffee, then up to read the Times and say that I wanted to do SOMETHING this afternoon, and we talked vaguely about going to the Staten Island Zoo, to Dewis Dork's (Doris Dukes) gardens, and finally decided on the Museum of Natural History. John had coffee earlier and tuna fish, and when I looked for lunch, I saw the bacon so I had a bacon-brunch which was very tasty. Then we decided to call Avi, but there was no answer, then called Fred, and he was there with his friend Tracy, but he invited us over beforehand, so that he could talk it over with Tracy and decide what to do, including a Bach Cantata at 5 pm. So we walked up in the bitter 10° cold (still without snow, still only one snowfall this year so far) to Fred's place, and Tracy had a completely beautiful face with large lash-rimmed eyes and a beautiful head of black curly hair and a lovely face and beautiful personality. John and Fred and I sat and chatted, and I'd sort of assumed Fred had gone OUT for food for lunch, but about 3:30 Tracy said he was VERY tired since he hadn't slept all night, and Fred said he'd go out for groceries. John said he was going to my place, since (he later told me he was bored to tears with Fred) he didn't feel like seeing the Cantata. Tracy and I chatted, backbiting Fred, and Fred came back to put Tracy to sleep at 4, cook dinner, cancel the Cantata date, and by this time I felt like a third wheel on a unicycle, but there was dinner for me, awful veal on peppery rice, great carrots and awful lima beans, and Tracy ate in the bedroom, caterwauling about how Fred wouldn't let him come out with company, and finally I said I had to leave, kissing them both goodbye thoroughly, hinting broadly "If I don't go soon, I'll crawl in WITH you." They didn't take the bait, so I left and walked back to my place, where John had eaten earlier, and I wanted to watch TV at 7:30, but John felt like barring, so he left just before "Africa's Mzima Spring" came on at 8:15 with nice underwater hippo shots, all about hippo SHIT, for that matter, and then watched a dull Anne Seymour flashing through her short life on "Henry VIII," and I went to John's, showered, and he came at 11.
DIARY 2655
MONDAY, JANUARY 17. Subway home early after feeling lousy in the morning, and telephone IBM to fix the typewriter, and she says he'll be along sometime this afternoon, so I have to stay home all day. Get the bug in my mind to clean out the top dresser drawer, which is so overloaded with souvenirs, and soak the last few stamps from the Christmas cards I'd cataloged Friday and the envelopes I'd gotten from John just last night, and sort through the junk into programs, personal, matchbook covers, memberships cards, and put THAT all away by noon, and the stamps have dried out and I put THOSE into the album, putting away the duplicates, and by now it's 3 pm, I haven't had lunch yet, and the typewriter repairman knocks at the door, berating me for not paying the $42 yearly maintenance charge, for which I'd get free parts and labor, but I would have paid FOUR years charges already, since I got it in November 1968, and that's $168 for only a $46 repair bill NOW. He works and works until 4:45, and I decide to count my stamps while he's dong it, ending up with 990 American stamps, almost 3/4 of them mint (and it's going over 1000 and over 3/4 when I send away for the NEXT batch of mint ones from Washington), and over 13,300 stamps of all kinds. Finish and he's STILL working, so I finish reading "Lost Cities of Asia" figuring I'm soon going to have to redo my bookshelves to make more room for everything: at the very least doubling up on two more shelves of the deep white bookcases, and I'm thinking of starting a wall system from Joe at the Door Store. Then end that and he's gone at 5 and I have a VERY late lunch, sitting funnily in the dusky window at an odd eating hour, and a few people call about the Mattachine meeting, and I get the apartment fixed up, not really having any time to do any typing to start catching up, and Dick Smith shows up first at 6:50 for the Nominating Committee meeting (see next page). Everyone leaves at 9:45 and I put on hamburger for dinner when John comes in at 10, exhausted from his 3½ hours of dancing and improvisation class, so he soaks in the tub while I eat dinner, and then we chat about the day and feel good together and get to bed at 11:30.
DIARY 2657
TUESDAY, JANUARY 18. Again I laze in bed, though he's handed me off in a ripping way, since I feel that the semen literally POPS out of my cock and there's a sort of burst-bubble soreness about my cock afterward, and John comes by rubbing on me, both feeling very released by the activities. He's gone and I have breakfast and get to the typing for a change, but it goes very slowly, and there are noises that I'm not used to which make me nervous, and the most I can do is seven pages before I have to call it quits. Telephone a couple of people and go out for alcohol and vitamin C and watch them catching an Anacin thief who keeps whinily insisting he was NOT the guy who ripped off the place last week, and Action Bleach at the far A&P, the only place that has them, and for groceries, delighted to find in the mailbox coming back an appreciation for "Acid House" outline from Drake Publishers, and I intend to call him for a meeting, but Roger calls, saying he's only 15 minutes away and would like to come up to give me back my check, so I say OK and at 1:30 he's here, saying he has a fabulous joint, showing me his shark's tooth earring in the newly-pierced ear, and saying how much he likes the Moody Blues. We smoke and I put on the Moodies, and we chat stonedly about his roommates and hash and a key of hash raffle with a free week in Afghanistan, and music, and then he has to leave, just when I'm grooving on his lovely eyes, and when he's gone I feel smashed and wanting some kind of sex, so I get the pipe and fill it up, and have a VERY strange afternoon (see next pages). Completely zonkered out of my mind, but manage to drag myself up for bacon sandwiches at 7 pm, then lay around taking things very slowly, showering and shaving and getting down to dinner at a pretty mediocre Hibachi Steak House with John, who has so little to eat he has to get a candy bar before going into Joan's, where we have wine and laugh with Gray in heat and with Joan in his faded orange bathrobe and VERY red hair, and we talk about many things, showing letters back and forth, and I'm woozy from the afternoon, so I suggest we leave at 11:20, taking "Acid House" with me, and get to John's and BED!
DIARY 2661
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19. He's up and typing before I get out of bed, take my silver stretch pants that I got at DTW two weeks ago and all Joan's books in his satchel, and get to my place after subway delays at 10, and the mail still hasn't been distributed. Call Drake and make an appointment for next Tuesday, and they say they're not a vanity press. Determine to catch up with the diary, and get through ten pages before breakfast, and do another fifteen for a total of 25 when I stop about 2:30 for lunch, finally catching up to date in the current diary, which pleases me no end! Then I'm curious about how many pages I DID type during any one day, and go through the entire set of datebook typings to make a NEW list to keep up to date, and find that I had a number of days typing 40 pages, one doing 42 pages, and when I was working on Itai's paper, I set the record for 50 typed pages (and those perfect, too) in one day (though admittedly they were somewhat smaller than the ones I type today, but NOT by 15%. Got the mail and it was only the tickets from Brewster for the Drag Ball, and I STILL wonder where all the things are. Try telephoning Brooklyn and New Jersey for two copies of "Acid House," but there are no answers. Then I have nothing left to do except really GET to the 60 pages left (now that I know there's NOT A CHANCE of doing them in one day, but it's certainly possible to do it in two days, though more likely three days would be a reasonable minimum---as for a maximum---well, we'll ESTABLISH that somewhat later). So I get into the pile of stuff left from the trip and sort through it all (after transcribing restaurant and hotel and purchase information onto my sheet/cheat) to get all the reference material I'll need, and John's in about 6:30, quite a bit earlier because he's sick and wants to smoke, so I finish sorting through, then exercise for an EASY level 4!, and eat dinner while he smokes, and then read his Voice while he dozes on the sofa, and he decides to get into bed about 9 pm, and I sit and read "The Young Male Figure" and have trouble placing it in the bookcases, and I'll have to fix THOSE up quite soon. Then it's 11:30, I shower and brush teeth and get to bed.
DIARY 2663
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20. To toss, sweat, feel lousy, wake and DREAM (see next page). John leaves again without saying anything, and I type only two pages before I have to eat breakfast and get out at 10:30 for unemployment, taking five checks (Roger's check for $100 from me, 3 $51 unemployment checks, and the check from Fred from Sunday for $15) in to the bank, then take everything I'll need for the evening along (not having time to wash my hair, which is getting positively cruddy) with me and walk down to the Donnell at noon to see the two hours of films on Olympic Games and assorted sporting events, and some of the film footage of slow-motion diving and track and field events and gymnastics still make me weak with the beauty of them. Out at 2 and dash into 53rd Street subway to get down to the Village and grab a slice of pizza, cold, before paying my $1 for the beginning of the movie at the Garrick. I'm hoping I can convert the last row into a sex row, like the row in the Elgin, but though there's an older fellow who seems interested two rows below the top, and someone sits just below me and seems to covertly glance at me pawing my crotch, and moves into MY seat when I leave, there's no action, though people seem more than mildly interested in my sitting there. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" isn't as good as I remember it being, and I surely don't remember the whole schmear about "people becoming dehumanized even if it ISN'T from seeds from space," which makes it rather talky and tacky. "Night of the Living Dead" is unbelievably gruesome, with brother tearing at sister, monsters devouring broiled bodies from blazing truck, daughter attaching mother with a garden trowel in the chest, and the black having to shoot mother and father in the head, then getting shot himself. The cinema-verité qualities were great, but the radiations from Venus were too awful to believe. Out at 5:20 and subway up to 57th, where I grab a hotdog for more food, and then get to Mattachine even a bit before 6 pm (see next page). Home at 10 and eat, and John's not in at 11 when he'd said he'd be, so I go to bed about 11:30, and he comes in, doesn't hear me calling from bed, chats the minimum about his 3-4 at the Elgin, and sleeps.
DIARY 2665
FRIDAY, JANUARY 21. Alarm rings, I don't move, he's out of bed, I DON'T fall back to sleep, but next thing I hear is door being locked behind him. Feeling terribly depressed, so I get out of bed and mope for a bit, but then the idea of the Mattachine Action Committee hits me, and I'm typing up the first and second drafts of the pages needed to present the idea to the Mat Board of Directors (and I try to call Bob Milne and the Brooklyn author's number, but get no answer, and DO get in touch with Arno about Dr. Blair, whom he thinks is OK) and I don't even have time to catch up with the diary pages, since I eat breakfast about 11, then shower and finally wash my hair after almost a week, and call to find that the Dance Benefit tickets have been SENT, but I didn't get them. Then down to the Elgin (see next pages) for a musically mediocre but now a photographically compelling "Monterey Pop," a dreadfully boring "Gimme Shelter" except for the slowed films of the killing, and for some of Jagger's more effeminate moments with his fuchsia shawl and his crushed velvet crotch, and "Don't Look Back" seemed the worst possible combination of exploitation and put-on, with only the lovely Joan Baez voice redeeming ANYTHING of it (and the comment that he found Donovan in a closet). Out just a bit after 6 and walk down 8th Avenue looking for a restaurant, and get into Costa Brava, hoping it would last long enough, and it lasted too long, with awful food, poorly prepared, and even more awful service, topped by the waitress's tacky presentation of MY change when I asked for change for the coat-check. Then walk over (passing two lovelies on the street---why can't they cross my LIFE as they cross my path?) to Jane and West for the Theater of the Ridiculous and the Tavel Brother's presentation of Ondine (the only good thing about it) in "The Life of Juanita Castro," which had all the brothers (Raul, Che, and Fidel) quite gay, and someone in the row behind kept saying "It's a true story, it's a true story, she's living in New York today." Then "Kitchenette" was perfectly dreadful, except for the tall cool boyishness of Mary Woronov, the effective kookiness of Nancy Lea, and the magnificent, pink, rubbed-looking, outstanding edible nipples of the blond Fredric Glenn. Home with John to talk (see following pages).
DIARY 2670
SATURDAY, JANUARY 22. Alarm rings, I determine to do John, and finally do. Then he leaves and I take care of lots of little things around the apartment, including vacuum cleaning, spraying the terrarium and taking out the old stuff that had become enwebbed the same way the old terrarium got died-out, spraying and then showering off the junky spiders who ALSO webbed the pot plant, and propped up the droopy leaves with a strung-out hanger to either kill or cure it, and since by the following Wednesday it's not dead, I guess I cured it. Then get involved in typing some more Mattachine plans, telephoning Bob Milne and Henry Messer and Dick Smith and Don Goodwin and talking to all of them about my plan, and all of them like it very much. John was supposed to come in at 6 pm, but he was in at 4:30, saying he didn't feel well because of his lasting cold, and I have to vacuum while he's in the tub, having had to clean it out because I'd intended to scour it, but he got here before I could. Still discouraged about being able not to find the time to finish the trip diary of its last sixty pages and clear off my desk of all the old junk, and still saddened by my lack of interest in practically everything, though I tried calling Porcelain and the Brooklyn agent again to get some "Acid House" things going again. Then John's out and we continue our talk from last night, and he floors me by saying that he's tried to start necking with me a number of times in the morning (this after I say we don't neck anymore, and I'd assumed it was because he was uptight about our mouths tasting NOT like toothpaste after a night of sleeping in them) and I refused and pushed him away, and he says that because of it, he's felt that he's no longer attractive in my eyes! I'm flabbergasted, can't believe that it's true, and tell him so in so many words, almost on the point of tears when I find he so insists it's true that in his mind it MUST be true, and he says that he felt like sex when he smoked the other evening, yet didn't want to initiate it for fear I'd move away, we never caressed in the evening, and we never held hands in the movies! I resolved to do better! Watched "Blue Angel" on TV after "All in the Family" and first 1/2 hour of "The People" while I ate. 11 bed.
DIARY 2671
SUNDAY, JANUARY 23. Wake at 9 am alarm for sitting-up sex with Baby Magic for both of us, and then I'm down to get the Times in a moisture-laden fresh morning air that feels quite a bit like spring, so after we eat and read the papers, we try telephoning for companions to go with us to Dewis Dork's Observatory Gardens in New Jersey. Call Joe Easter and Art Bauman for no responses, and try the pairs of Avi (who tells a horrible story of screaming and falling out of bed in a quasi-epileptic fit on Friday, arching his back and breathing heavily, unconscious of what was going on while Rolf tried to lay him on his stomach to prevent his swallowing his tongue) and Rolf, Joe and Bob, Fred and Tracy, Sergio and Kenneth, but they're sick, not home, not home, and rehearsing for the Cubiculo, respectively, so we leave at 1:20 on our own, getting there at 2:40, and the tour starts right away. (See next page.) Leave at 4 and get some 30.9¢ Shell gas that John says is the cheapest he's ever seen, also getting air in the tires that he says have been suspiciously losing air recently, and we're into the city at 5:30, driving around and around trying to find a place to park, and then meet Arnie and up to Norma's apartment for her black body-stocking and jewelry, stories about Ruth's abortion which will make Norma always support the pro-abortion laws in New York State, about her trip to Puerto Rico, about Betty's talk at the Psychiatric Institute on the East Side, John's and my appointment for a talk at Cornell, and then we have pita stuffed with hot cheese and some strange casserole-type Moroccan sloppy joes with screwdrivers, and we keep on talking until 9, when we put on "Anna of Cleves" looking quite a bit like Elsa Lancaster, for an interesting episode, and I pointedly hold hands with John, while Norma and Arnie do likewise, and John's very tired, saying that his sickness has tired him out, and we drive in just after 11, and get some drinks and get into bed to talk about how he might be DISAPPOINTED in me in having to look for an apartment himself, but he's begun taking down names of Brooklyn Heights agencies, since he says THAT'S where he wants to move, and we're somewhat more together now.
DIARY 2673
MONDAY, JANUARY 24. Have sex with him again, but he admits, after doing the finishing strokes himself, that he "wasn't very turned on," which sort of means I didn't turn him on. Back home to think to work just a few hours retyping the Mattachine things, and it becomes clear that I'll want to take the stuff to Mattachine tonight to get them looked at, approved, and enlarged by the telephone stuff before really STARTING it, and type five carbons of everything, finishing just before John gets in at 5:30, saying he wasn't going to class this evening because he still felt rather sick, though he's starting to recover from it. But by this time I feel that I'm coming down with something, so much so that I debated NOT having dinner with Norma last night, since SHE felt she was coming down with something, and I didn't want to complicate it, but did it nevertheless. Walked up to talk to a very uncooperative and offensive Warren Wilson, who pooh-poohed his participation in anything, saying he was very tired, and that this stint on Monday was his only chance for pleasure. Whatever it is typing him up can't be pleasant. Bob Milne laboriously wrote out a number of notations for people who want to work, and I left at 6:50, making an appointment to see Wayne on Thursday about working on some committees, Subway back for speed and put the hamburger on while showering, and John vetoes his own idea that I wear the silver lamé pants for the performance, though walking there we see a fellow with blue bells sewn with brilliants showing from under his fur coat. Norman Walker's lover is there, getting free tickets from the Assistant Box Office Manager Larry Campbell, who gets a promise for an exchange of favors, and I see Paul Taylor, Bess Meyerson, and numbers of dancers in the audience, but miss Paul Newman and Ed Sullivan who also attended, and looked at Mayor Lindsay during intermission. Huge crush to get in, and the thing started at 8:45, with intermission at 9:50, then from 10:20 to 12:05, and John left about 11:15, saying he just couldn't focus on the stage. I left, rather disappointed (see next page), and undressed and washed for bed without waking John, blanket off.
DIARY 2675
TUESDAY, JANUARY 25. He's up at 8 and I DRAG myself out of bed just so I can know that I'm OUT of bed when he leaves, and I have breakfast and sit over reading Scientific American until about 10:15, when with a jolt I remember the meeting with Drake at 11. Dress and out, and it IS a vanity press, except maybe cheaper, and he says I'd get about 2000 copies for about $1600, which isn't too bad, if it's THAT. He also suggests Dell, Signet and Bantam, and I note those down, getting home to find a letter, FINALLY, from Porcelain, but he doesn't SAY where he's got it now, though thankfully he now has a Manhattan office. Then plan for the rest of the busy day, and subway down to the Elgin (see next pages) in time for the 1:30 showing of "Sombra, the Spider Woman" and "The Black Whip Serials" for a rather boring afternoon of MOVIES, but not bad of sex, and out at 6:20 with Bob to walk in the VERY windy weather (with gusts reaching 70 mph, the news later says, and it was at least 35 mph on 57th Street) down to the Thai Kitchen, where we have GOOD crisp noodles, he has a rather uninteresting looking salad with sliced steak on top, and we're out at 7:30 to walk over in the freezing weather to the Garrick for "Tales of Hoffman" and "Lovers of Teruel" which he doesn't care for, but when I come back to where he'd moved when his eyes AGAIN refused to focus, he says my jaw drops to the floor when I see him sitting next to a DOLL of a bearded fellow, and they obviously have been "indulging," and John later says that he just put his hand down for a "few moments, and there was this absolute FLOOD of liquids just sort of squirting everywhere," and he came out of nowhere and rubbed legs and tensed calves to very good effect. I like "Lovers of Teruel" very much still, thinking the sensuousness and surrealistic effects very well done, but John thinks "I've seen it all, better, somewhere before." We get to his place via the $475 apartment he'd seen on Joralemon, and I persuade him to tell Mrs. Johnson to tell him if anything comes up in HIS building, which I would find ideal, hopefully cheaper, and then HE wouldn't have to move. Drink beef bouillon and whiskey for STRANGE intercombination.
DIARY 2678
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26. Wake and cuddle, both soft, he's out of bed, and I'm up to make the bed and leave before 9, onto the crowded subway. I settle in with Scientific Americans and breakfast, then go down for the mail at 10:30 after reading yesterday's Times, and lounge through that until noon. Then I start typing to catch up on the diary, and get through the eight pages to catch up by 2, have lunch---just after breakfast I washed dishes, too---and want to do something else, but I just feel too tired to do anything, spitting mucus into a glass, coughing occasionally, feeling worse and worse. John calls to say that Azak said he had Peking flu, which at first I think is a joke, but it's just the local virus mutation from the Asiatic continent this year, and also says that there ARE chances of apartments coming up in his building. About 3 I lay down for a bit, and it feels so good that I get the pillow down and doze for a couple of hours, getting up at 5:15 wondering why John hadn't shown up at 5. Scour the tub with great efforts, and then settle down to type the first NEW page of the trip diary, and John enters at 6. He settles down with the Village Voice and aspirin and I type a few more pages, taking THREE days for the first day I catch up with, since I remember so much about that busy day in Delhi, and then get out to a call from Alan Henderson, who'll hopefully leave me the questionnaires before I'm on duty on Thursday, we talk about the cold winds in Chicago and his awful windy flight back with a terrified friend, and then my hamburger's thawed and John and I sit at the table while I have it and he eats his bowl of salmon. He smokes but I decline, feeling woozy ENOUGH without the added wooziness of pot, and I read the Voice until 9, when we watch "American Dream Machine," but I leave at 9:40 to sit in a hot tub then a shower, washing my hair, and come out to watch ANOTHER Malle film on India until 11, while my hair dries and we have popcorn and orange juice, and we even sit in lethargy and watch a ten-minute chess problem following it, and I chide John "You have now become a boob-tube watcher, just to see what's on next," and we get into bed at 11:15, leaving heat off.
DIARY 2679
THURSDAY, JANUARY 27. Toss and turn and lay awake a lot, John's up at 7:30, and we lie together miserably, then we're both up and he leaves. I try to do some typing after breakfast, but all I can get to is two pages, and then it's 10:15 and I get downtown to sign for another unemployment check, come back up to cash two checks at the bank and walk over to get groceries, feeling that I'm walking much slower, there's a pain in my chest, and my knees feel weak, too, all from the cold/flu that we've both got now. Try to take things easy, because I know I've got a busy day ahead. Home for the mail and I finally got the two books from Dell by Heinlein, then shower and John's in for steak for lunch, and we leave at 1:55 to grab a cross-town bus and a different uptown bus, John paying a total of $1.40 just to get us there, but that's still cheaper than a cab would have been. In just after 2:30 and meet Ruth and Ellen (a poor dumpy 33-year-old) and Eileen (an elegant "popala" with a large dark hat on) and Dr. Kaplan fills us in on what the class will be like (see next page). Bob Milne gets there after 3, and we leave at 5, looking for a key shop so that I can get a copy of the membership file to do research on. Need money for the bus, so I go into a delicatessen to get a Virginia ham sandwich for dinner, but forget that it's 35¢, and get two quarters and a nickel in change. Ask the girls at the bus stop for change, but none has any, and one pretty one says she won't have enough for her next bus ride, so I say I'll put in 15¢ (which I'd have to put in anyway) for her, and SHE only has a quarter, so that's what she puts in for herself. The street in front of the Russian Embassy is closed for some reason, so the bus detours around to 69th Street, and I walk up to Mattachine from 55th and West End (see following page). Leave at 9:35 and subway quickly to John's, and he shows me some of his tries with his chain-mask, and I suggest they'll look more menacing over a black velvet hood. I have some milk with unstirrable fudge topping, and we sit and talk about how well the meeting went that afternoon, and he says he used to be jealous when he saw me groovily relating to someone else. Bed at 11:15.
DIARY 2682
FRIDAY, JANUARY 28. Alarm's off at 7:15 and we lay exhaustedly together. He's up to get to Azak's for a stool examination and we ride together to 42nd Street before 8:15, and I have breakfast, read some of Scientific American, looking out at the SECOND SNOWFALL OF THE SEASON, and type three diary pages when the doorknocker knocks and it's the mailman with the three books I ordered from Spectra so long ago. Read the stories and look at the pictures and get very horny, so I take out my cock and beat it off twice, feeling sorrier than ever that John and I are so sick. Then have lunch and get working on the stencil for the Mattachine Project and Member Profiles, and that always seems to take longer than I expected. Finish just about 4 pm when Arnie calls back and I say that I've called John (after trying his home and DTW all morning) and he wants to see the Alwin Nikolais company, so Arnie comes over and we chat about group sex again, I invite him to the House-Messer Tsi-Dun on the 23rd, he gives me a finger-fucking rubber from Norma's production house, and we talk until he leaves for the museum for another movie at 5:20, and I subway up to Mattachine with the records and forms for everyone, and have a bit of trouble with the Gestetner machine for the notices, and talk with Alan and meet an older-than-I-expected Chris, and put the notices in the box and get Alan squared away and get onto a subway-window wait for ten tokens at 6:50, getting into the Academy area at 7:30, so I have a chance for two Nedick's hotdogs and an orange drink for dinner before getting to the groovy Academy audience at 7:45, John getting there LATE at 7:55, and "Somniloquy" I'd seen before at the City Center, more lights than anything else and not very satisfying, "Scenario" was quite brilliant as a model of group-therapy from narrow-vision, investigation, skeleton-persons, crying, laughing, relating, and finally sex-projected realities. "Foreplay" was also very satisfyingly funny and creative, and even John liked Nikolais. Talked to Murray Louis in the audience, as well as a still puppyish Fred Courtney and a fish-handed friend, and John WAS tired, but recovered in an hour. Bed at 11:15.
DIARY 2683
SATURDAY, JANUARY 29. Cuddle MOST limply, and John even apologizes for his not feeling well afterwards. I leave somewhat late and wait a long time for a Saturday subway, getting home to breakfast and typing one page to keep the diary completed, then do some more fussing with Mattachine stuff and call Henry Messer, deciding to go down to his place to talk things over, and eat a quick lunch and get down at 12:35 and he talks sort of aimlessly about all the problems of Mattachine and all the things he does for it, and I keep telling him I have to leave, and he saddles me with retyping the Mattachine Certification of Incorporation and the Constitution, and jots down all sorts of notes onto the organization list of Mattachine, and finally I merely stand up to leave, after agreeing to a quickly organized Mattachine Times meeting on Thursday. Walk down to the Garrick (see next page) for "Marat/Sade" (see following page) and "The Killing," which is almost ludicrously prolonged in a sort of Jack Webb / Dragnet sort of seriousness, though the shots in the face seemed rather far-reaching in their brutality. Out at 6:15, just about perfect timing, and subway to John's just a few minutes early to find him in the tub but the table set and everything cooked. Avi and Rolf arrive first at 7:45 even though they called about being late, and then Sergio and Kenneth arrive and Sergio and John tend to talk about business while we other four talk about various things, and then we're ready for dinner, after I try one of the raw clams and find the taste, if I bother to taste it, terrible and salty and briny, and what's the use of wolfing it down if you don't taste it? The wines are dizzying and I find myself slurring over letters even before the evening really gets going. The brains are spectacularly good, even Sergio complementing John beyond measure, and the beets are too vinegary in John's quest of piquancy, the Zito's French bread is good warmed, and everyone's so full (after artichokes, marvelously fleshy, for an appetizer) they skip salad and go directly to the fabulous apple pie, and everyone sits around and groans and talks, and leaves at 11, with Avi dizzy and having to sit on the sofa, and Kenneth being uncomfortably full.
DIARY 2686
SUNDAY, JANUARY 30. Rather determine to have sex this morning, and he's quickly hard and I am too, so I go down on him and he on me, and he reaches for the Baby Magic and we play for a long time, then he gets me off by hand for a great shooting, and then rolls on top of me to thrust away into my fist for a shootingly satisfying ejaculation for him, and we lay kissing quietly until he gets up to shower, and I do too, then I tackle all the dishes while he goes out for the paper. Finish with the dishes just after 11, and the Times lasts until a bit before 12:45, when I announce I'd like to get my student card for Alwin Nikolais, and he agrees to come and drive me into town, and we start across the bridge as the clock says 12:56, and most surprisingly get to my place at 1:14, so it's taken just a minute or so over twenty minutes from his place to mine. Upstairs to grab money and binoculars and a cup of yogurt that I add to the French bread that I had for a snack at his place when he insisted he was still full from last night (and Kenneth said he didn't eat until 8 pm Sunday, either), and then get caught in the entry to the Brooklyn Bridge, and on it, getting there in time to get only ONE student ticket when the bastard even asked for ANOTHER ID card, and a quick resale at the box office got another $6.50 orchestra seat for $3, and he probably paid $6.50 for it, since it wasn't marked as being one of the $3.33 subscription seats, nor one of the $2 student seats. "Sanctum" is interesting with its see-through leotards with tiny straps, and Louis is sort of fun to watch, then John moves down and "Tent" starts out very slowly, but has some nice things when it finally gets started, and "Personae" had some fun things, though it was all very casually choreographed and done. Out at 5 and John wants to nap, and I read a bit of "Total Theater" and get over to Arnie's at 5:30 to get the patriotic shirt from Arnie for the drag ball, then back for John to wake up and agree to join me at Chicken America for a good cheap dinner, and then back to his place for his trousers and over to "Man's Country" at 8:15 (see next pages), back at 11:15, he's in at 11:30, we chat and fall asleep.
DIARY 2692
MONDAY, JANUARY 31. Since he had all the activity at the trucks last night, he didn't seem ready for action, so he got up quickly and I was rather surprised I hadn't coughed all evening: unique cough syrup, since I kept myself and John awake for almost half an hour with uncontrollable coughing the night BEFORE. Home before 9 and don't feel like doing ANYTHING, so I shrug off all efforts to write and sit down with "Farmer in the Sky," finishing it through the morning, then down to find I had no mail, and take up reading again with "Starman Jones" for the early part of the afternoon. John surprises me by coming in at about 4:30, and he says he really feels awful and wasn't about to go to any class, so I continued to read until just before six, when I showered and washed my hair, and then we sat down to have an early dinner before my Mattachine meeting, and Dick Smith rather annoys me by coming in TOO early at 6:40, just after John had finished, but I still had a few forkfuls of food to shovel down, and John was in to get something together, and then he retired into the bedroom to smoke and get to bed, saying he wasn't about to go to Sergio's music at the Cubiculo tonight. Then Jerry Chandler arrives at 7 and the meeting starts in earnest (see next page), and Madolin arrives a bit later while we're all having mu tea, and Warren Wilson said he'd finally gotten out through Bob Milne. I say I want to leave at 8:30, and they're gratefully out, and I get to the Cubiculo about 8:45 for about ten minutes of Jim Fulkerson's nonsense, then an intermission when Sergio waves at me, and then three other things that lead me to think about parodies (see following page). Out quite early at 9:45, and home to find John still in bed, so I can watch TV in peace. Flip from station to station, lingering on a sexy Sonny of Sonny and Cher, and then at 10:30 watch a confused "Bangladesh" that the US seemed to HAVE to be against, but there was nothing to be against: they have a problem and need all the help they can get. Then at 11 it was "Simon and Laura" a nothing with a peppy Kay Kendall and a not-very-good Peter Finch, then drag through Olivier-surprising "The Magic Box," with Robert Donat, a beautiful Maria Schell, and everyone else in British films. Bed at 3:15.
DIARY 2696
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1. Don't even hear John getting up for shower, but he gets back in bed when he's finished, hair still wet, and we cuddle for a bit and chat, and he says he still isn't feeling well, so he won't be going to Tsi-Dun tonight, and that I should bring my keys to his place in case he's out somewhere. I still don't feel like doing anything, so I sit down after breakfast and read the end of "Starman Jones," rather angry with Heinlein for taking the same old "rags to riches" theme, without any great plot line, and make an obvious million out of it, where those of us who can't get started would like to have THREE books out, rather than THIRTY-THREE. That takes me to about noon and I get down to the Museum of Modern Art after lunch at 1 for "Scarlet Days" a lost film by D.W. Griffith, found in the Russian film archives with Russian subtitles, and aside from the celluloid-chewing scenes by the villain, there's very little spectacle or even suspense to keep the audience interested, though a goofy girl giggled continuously from the seat behind me. And there were enough cute guys in the audience that I wish MMA had a back row too! Back home to type 12 pages to catch up with diary, have dinner, shower and shave and put in my contact lenses, fix up the place somewhat so that I won't come back to a messy apartment, and subway down to Norton's at 61 West 10th Street, to wait around in the entranceway for quite a bit until he rings us up to apartment 6D (see next pages, forgot, see T200-203). Out about 10:15 and subway to John's about 10:45, surprised to find him already in bed, and I tell him about the party, and then start cuddling with him and suspect that he's just about as stoned as I am, so I rest my head on his chest and work down his belly to his cock, and he's ready to go, and after a bit I reach for the Baby Magic to smooth the way for a long series of playing, and he sighs louder and louder and I'm quite stoned out of my mind, and he comes with a great gout of come, first for some time, I guess, and he hugs me and goes into the bathroom to get most of the come and salve off himself before going to bed, and I think we're both happy that that happened in the evening, when he likes it.
DIARY 2698
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2. Wake about 8 and I play with him, getting hard myself first, then he works over me and I go down, and I work over him and he won't come up, and we have a rather fruitful talk about our circumstances (see next page). Then I subway home and get out the list I'd started yesterday: a chronology of dates that I went to all the baths, and that got me interested in just how OFTEN I had sex in groups, and what would have been the largest number of people I did at one time, or how many times I'd come in a group situation, so I put down all the times I'd been to the Elgin and Tsi-Dun and other parties that I could remember. The bones of the list (the dates and places) I'd put down yesterday, so today at 10 I got out the old diaries and started going through from 1968 when I actually started with my first trip to Everard's (this wouldn't count the FIRST threesome I had in 1957, or some very occasional threesomes and maybe even foursomes since then (like Don van Eman and Jerry Gropper, or sessions in Central Park, or times like the night in the Omaha YMCA), but I paged through to find some parties that I'd missed before I took to devoting separate pages to special evenings, and even some early Elgins that didn't merit a separate page because nothing much happened, and went into the bedroom to get the 1972 volume and was astounded to find it was 3:15! Ate lunch and finished at 4, finding the double-session at Continental coming to 8 dos in a 24-hour period, and Man's Country some kind of record with 6 dos in TWO hours. Type two pages just to get something done in the diary today, and then it's time to shower and subway to meet John at Charles French Restaurant, which was large-roomed and rather elegant in an old-fashioned ways, but the food and service were nothing to rave about. Out at 8:30 and John decides he doesn't feel like going to NYU for the Dan Waggoner dance program, so I decide to go home with him, and he starts working on something at the desk, and I decide to have some grass, and there's a funny misunderstanding: I fill the pipe, he says I should wait 15 minutes, finds the pipe half-full, I say I filled it for one, he gives me wine, thinking the one was HIM, and we laugh and my depression leaves with a good session (see following pages after Tsi-Dun at Norton; T204-205).
DIARY 2706
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3. Wake with the typical drugged feeling in the morning. Hardly any contact seemed necessary after the session last night, and John seemed more cheerful about the relationship. Home and eat breakfast, then watch "The Smallest Show on Earth," thinking it was the muscle-building one with Bill Travers in, but it was an amusing thing with an almost indiscernible Peter Sellers as an old projectionist for the Bijou Theater, and it seemed to completely MISS the chance of having the theater saved by showing the old films that he saved and Margaret Rutherford played the piano for. That runs to 11:30, and I'm grimly curious what trouble I'll run into down at Unemployment for being late, but the entire fuss is centered on my not getting a signature in the box for last week, which I'm sure I went IN for, and nothing is mentioned about my being a half-hour late, so it seems safe enough. The timing is good to dash back up to the Donnell at noon for a series of old films, the worst being the often-seen "Great Train Robbery," the best being some extremely early color films from France. Out at 2 and home for lunch and write the article about the Member's Profiles and the Project Profiles for the Mattachine Times meeting tonight, and don't even have time to get into the old film review that I wanted to do about Griffith and Eisenstein and all the classical unreviewed films. Shower and put a tin of tuna fish into my pocket to eat at John's afterwards, since I've aranged THREE nights in a row at his place to get him to accept my being here on Friday night for the next to the last Henry VIII. Subway up in a terribly driving rain that soaks everything clear through, making it a totally miserable windy evening, though it's just as well it didn't change to snow, because it probably would have been a foot or more. In before 6 and have a chance to do the additional copies of the forms before I start answering the phone (see next page), and get out late at 10 pm, again going through the driving rain and water-sheeted pavements to get to the subway and lengthy delays, getting to John's at 10:30, which he thinks is late because he thought I got finished at 9, not 9:30. Chat and bed at midnight.
DIARY 2708
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4. Say nothing about meeting anywhere tonight, and I get home to eat and don't feel like typing, so I finish "The Soft Machine," and manage to type one page before it's time to eat lunch, which I don't feel like doing (see T197), but the only thing there's really TIME to do is get into the subway and go down to 22nd near Broadway to find a variety shop that sells silver-tinsel face-masks to match my trousers for 35¢, getting it put into an enormous bag. Back to 7th Avenue to find a pizza shop that sells slices for 30¢, and have two of them, and it's terribly windy and chilly as I get into the Elgin about 2:05, after the beginning of the films (see next page). "Repulsion" is still surprising with the man in the door-mirror, and I'm sorry to be able to watch the razor-slashing and find that it isn't nicely done: what I imagined was happening while I hid my eyes was far more terrifying. And the walls jerking apart weren't so effective, though the hands reaching from the walls were. "Dr. Strangelove" was not as funny and far more ridiculous than I remembered, with George C. Scott looking very much like Paul Newman. "The Magic Christian" was entirely against the idea of the book, with various things merely happening, rather than being caused by Guy Grand, and they ignored the movies, cosmetics, ad agency, and TV parodies, also. The black and white ballet was sexily fun, though. Then there's the "It takes a Phone to Cry" short, which brings me up to 7:30, and I get across town in the freezing cold to the Jamaican restaurant, figuring John won't want to spend a night in ANOTHER 6th Avenue restaurant, and the service is pretty awful, but they're mainly put off by my sitting for fifteen minutes in my overcoat, getting warmed up. And the fact that there was no Tia Maria in the Hot Jamaican Grog was a disappointment. But the ribs were very tasty, and the crowd was nice, and I got out at 8:30 to again brave the zippy weather to get over to Loeb Auditorium for a pleasantly Chinese evening with Lou Harrison, meeting Bruce King and Sergio and Kenneth, who left early, and John and I sat through the rather boring "Young Caesar" excerpts, his early work being best. Watch "Henry VIII" and bed.
DIARY 2710
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, John's right out of bed to start on his washing at 9:15, and he said he wanted to type after he finished washing, so I got to the typewriter right then and got through eight pages before he chased me away, and then I started working on my penis for the Mardi Gras tonight, and I was glad of the chance to work on it under his supervision, and by noon I was finally finished. He was still typing, so I took the chance to go through everything from Mattachine and throw away most of the old stuff, because now everything was transcribed onto the PROFILES (pro-files?) and that took a good hour and a half or two hours, and before I knew it it was 3 pm and time to turn on the Winter Olympics TV coverage, which nicely went through a resumé of the Opening Ceremonies, a look at the facilities in Sapporo, and a review of the events to the present time, which is confusing to correlate, since they're actually 14 hours ahead of us: 10 pm on Sunday is actually noon on Monday in Japan. Then watch "Brother Orchid" with a slow-moving plot that pointed up the extreme anomaly of Hollywood concepts: the monastery was PICTURED as being filled with saintly men who lived their lives for others, yet the ACTORS were probably all self-centered, money-grubbing bit-players fighting for every inch of film footage, and in actual LIFE in such a monastery would probably be a hot-bed (yum) of homosexuality. And yet they DID have a good idea, in that such a place, if it WERE away from the world, COULD be quite perfect a life. It's over at 6:50, so I dash into the shower to wash my hair, then out at 7 to watch a great film by National Geographic about the Northwest Territories, which I'd like to see for myself someday, and then it's 8 and I pack John's briefcase (having had tuna fish for dinner) and get to Art's, where John and Jeff and Art and Tom talk about dance till I'm bored out of my head, then I smoke and change into my costume just after 10, and we're all out at once, where I'm frozen into shock by the sheer conductivity of the silver-lame, encasing my ass and legs in ice from the cold wind, and we drive around looking for a place to park for the Mardi Gras (see next pages). Bed, weary, at 3:15 am.
DIARY 2717
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6. John seems to be sleeping, but I've got to piss, and get out of bed to see that it's 11 am! John's up then, too, and we're into the living room to eat our various breakfasts and I get down to a few pages of the Times before I have to leave at 12:10 for the Museum of Modern Art for Douglas Fairbanks in "Mister Robinson Crusoe," which showed him as an aging business man, showing only his legs in the last few minutes, with a positively manic production of goods patterned after civilization to make his "jungle-life" more palatable. Some of the natives were nice, but the exploitative ending of having Saturday performing at the Ziegfeld Follies was a bit too much. Out at 2 for lunch, then perversely work the Sunday Times Double-Crostic and finish reading the paper, and Charles Mountain comes over at 4:30 to give me lots of stuff to type for the Mattachine Times, and what he said would take five minutes turns into an hour, with us finally talking about the reasons for and against living together. Subway quickly to John's, getting in at 6:10, and he says some of the guests won't be showing up until 8. I say "Oh, then I won't be able to watch Henry VIII at 9," and that leads to a whole can of worms (see next pages). Bruce enters first at 7, then Jeff, then Bob and Harold Rosenthal, or whatever his name was. The conversations are interesting, about apartments on Riverside Drive, dance through the years, critics, performances and orchestras and ballet performances, and then we get down to eating John's caraway seed soup, very tasty, but hardly repeatable, and his sweetbreads with mushrooms served over ham, and though many people haven't had sweetbreads, most of them (except Jeff) like it, despite the conversation about dentists and various doctor's operations. Drink and talk around the table, and then many have to leave, and we sit and chat with the last few until they leave just before 11, and we decide it's best to wash dishes immediately, getting them out of the way, and then I shower and we have some more plum wine, and settle down into bed to talk a bit more about the ruckus of the evening, but get nowhere by 1 am, so I toss and turn, then up to smoke and fall asleep nicely.
DIARY 2720
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7. Wake feeling terribly tired and drugged out of my mind at 8 am. Loaf around while he gets ready for work, and into the subway to get up to the bank at 9, and it's been snowing in what the papers say is only the SECOND measurable snowfall of the entire year, so one of the two little ones before must have been VERY little. Get money, finally, and more food stamps, and go home to plan on a day of high activity, but end up doing not much. Fuss around in the morning, then type seven pages to get sort of caught up with diary, though there are lots of pages to go, and the pages seem to add up faster than I can DO them, and then watch "Song of Songs" with a much-too-sophisticated Marlene Dietrich playing an orphan girl going to live with the most unlikely Tante Rasmussen in the world: Alison Skipworth. That's over at 3 and I have lunch during it, and then at 3:55 starts the good double feature at the Embassy, "Husbands" which is most amazing if it's taken to be a TRUE picture of activities of these poor straight guys who seem to have latent homosexuality, impotence, premature ejaculation, and raging alcoholism all going against them, not to mention wanting to kill their wives and sleep with their fellow husbands (and VERY odd to see the show at the Embassy Theater on 72nd Street and Broadway and to SEE the marquee of the movie house IN the movie ITSELF---a true stoned sensation. Now if the camera had continued inside and found ME sitting there ...). "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" is wackily good, with a spectacular performance by the beautiful Susannah York, a beautiful character-filled Hiroshima pilot of William Hickey, and a totally miscast Rod Steiger, George Grizzard, and Don Murray. Out at 8 and walk home in the terribly windy cold, having dinner early, and John comes in at 9 after saying that he'd be in at 10. He said he was so preoccupied with our conversation that he couldn't concentrate on Dance and Improvisation class, so he decided to come here as soon as he could. We finished the conversation we had about his extremism, though it didn't have any concrete results except to clear the air. Then it was as late as 11, but I still felt there was a distance between us that would be best closed by physical contact, so I suggested that we smoke, and we took off on one of the pleasantest sessions yet, which did truly help to cement the relationship (see next page). Bed at 12, stonedly.
DIARY 2722
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8. Wake feeling ABSOLUTELY fagged out, drag out of bed at 9. I immediately begin counting the number of errors in past issues of Mattachine Times in order to have something to compare progress with MY typing against what had been typed before. This takes a long time, and I figure the percentage average of error, and though the NUMBER of errors varies widely, the PERCENT of errors falls between .2% and .4%, which is really pretty bad, about 3 words wrong out of 100. Then I get to typing, doing nine pages to get everything up to date, finally, and I take the washing downstairs and the stuff out to the Chinese laundry, getting back to find to my chagrin that the hot water's been off, and the soap tablets didn't even completely DISSOLVE in the cold water, so this washing isn't a very good one. Get groceries, too, so that I have something for lunch, and then Charles Mountain AND Jack Ganfield call with various bits of news, so I feel that I have to get into the typing for the Times, and call Henry to find that he SAYS they decided at the meeting to stay at least ONCE more with the old printer, so that the old 3" column size is still valid. I proofread all of the articles that have been turned in, and then it's time to eat dinner and subway up to the board meeting (see next page). Leave in a funk at 10:30 and get to John's to find him just getting into bed at 11:05, so I smoke before taking a shower, briefly groan about the session to him, and start cuddling. He's not up immediately, but neither am I, and in the dark we toss about and suck on each other until he decides to get the bottle, which I can't find, and then we slather each other with Baby Magic and he's finally completely hard, but I'm only slightly tumescent, and it seems he's aware of it and I'm aware of it, and I figure to get him off first, but as much as I work, so much he soaks up the pleasure without coming close to coming, so finally I'm fearing NOTHING will happen with me, so I soak up HIS pleasuring hand which rubs my cock along my stomach, and after I come I use my semen to lather him up, grinding and rubbing away until I think he'll be reduced to chafed strips of flesh, but he comes finally, and we sleep.
DIARY 2724
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9. Again lay TOTALLY petrified after alarm rings at 8. Out to the subway at 8:45 and have to wait for three jammed-full subway trains to pass, getting home about 10, still too early for the mail. Eat breakfast and type two pages and intend to get down to Mattachine business, but find that Henry didn't include my CORRECTED version of the Constitution, and then I get disgusted and catch up with the movie list for the past year, getting even more statistics into it, and it takes simply hours to come up with final totals, and I listen to various things on an increasingly poor record player to help pass the time without listening to radios from next door, dogs on the street and from 1706, and the thump-thump-thump of the perpetual, non-findable picture-hanger who isn't in 1603, and she doesn't ever HEAR it. Still can't wash socks because the heat and hot water are turned off, and I've stripped to put on my long johns just so that I can keep warm during the day. But this day is totally about the filling out of the movie list, and I get rather high listening to the same old music, going over the same old movie titles, and have the idea that this HAS happened before, and will continue to happen, and I'll still debate whether it SHOULD be done. Telephone Anne Eristoff for the dinner, but she's in Newburgh, telephone Sidney Porcelain to show my diaries to him, and he says I can come at 11:30 tomorrow morning, which will fit in nicely with my trip to unemployment. Call Marty to chat for about half an hour about his babysitting, opera-going, and new address and phone number, and Avi calls about 5:15, and I cut him short, saying I have to get to John's for dinner and "Kaddish." Do so, and get to Foffe's after sherry and quiche, not so hot with no cheese and leftover sweetbreads, and John has venison ragout which he likes, and I have partridge, which is quite stringy and tough, and the wild rice is awful, fried in some kind of grease. Back to get John's Voice for him to read, and to Brooklyn at 8 to stand in the lobby until 8:30, and the television and video cameras are pointless, and only after a bit does Allen Ginsberg's mother's insanity come through. Bed at 12.
DIARY 2725
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10. Toss and turn and have trouble sleeping because of terrible heart-burn-like pains in my stomach, which I fear may be the first signs of ulcers acting up due to the tension of not knowing what to do about money and working and writing. I get back home and type one page while doing nothing much until I get out to sign for another unemployment check, and down to 17th Street for Porcelain at 11:30, but though I wait till 12 and knock at his door, there's no one answering, and get back to find that the plumbers have to tear up my wall in the bedroom to find a large squirting leak in the pipe, and I move the desk and typewriter out of the way and type some of the Mattachine articles, but the dust from the plaster in the wall is getting so bad, and the noise is so loud, that I have to stop typing and go into the living room to sit down and start reading Burroughs' "The Ticket that Exploded," and Porcelain calls to make it HERE 11:30 TOMORROW, and while they're still here, turn on TV at 4:30 for the much awaited "Come Back, Little Sheba," which is the seventh-last entry in the list of Academy Award movies that I want to see, and I spent a lot of time in the morning looking over the list and counting the remaining six as many ways as I can, and an amazing proportion (1/2) ARE available from the Museum of Modern Art, and I even debate actually RENTING them (though the "Last Command" is $45 for the 16mm version, and I'd have to rent a projector, too). I also look forward to the shirtless boy-wonder, grinning when I hear him referred to in the film as "The Body," but though Burt Lancaster makes a reference to Lady's (Shirley Booth) looking at them through the keyhole, that part of the film's been cut, and Arnie says that there may be about 40 minutes cut since it was shown in 90 minutes on TV, with its many commercials. It's over at 6 and I grab the subway fast to get up to Mattachine only about 10 minutes late (see next page). Leave about 10 and subway on the terribly slow system to my place about 11, and we chat for a little bit before going to bed, I calling guy for TV parties, John complaining that my evenings at Mattachine are taking more and more time, and I, too, am discouraged about how much I've volunteered for, vowing that it has to be kept to a lesser extent in the future: I'm not living SOLELY for the purpose of Mattachine!
DIARY 2727
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11. John and I are up at 8 and quickly find the plumbers passing through the hallway and room every five minutes, and they shut off the water again and break through the wall completely. I read for a bit, and when they're no longer in the room I write a quick note to Bernie to say he can come up next weekend, to Grandma thanking her for the Christmas goodies, to Laird thanking him for the Christmas card and sort of inviting him to John's for dinner sometime, and to seven other addresses for free catalogs, bills, etc. Then, in the middle of everything, Sidney Porcelain comes in at 11:20, John leaves for his WNDY meeting, (see next page) and stays until 2:30, with the plumbers still running back and forth, and when he leaves and I have lunch, I hear water squirting in the bedroom and get in to find piles of newspapers soaked with water and a fine stream of steamy spray is jetting about two feet into the room, starting to soak the rug, and I prop a plank up in front of it, letting the water deflect off it as it had been deflecting off the wall. Call Avi and he tells me about the five-hour set of examinations he's supposed to have next Thursday, with a full head X-ray and other probes and tests to see just what's wrong with him, and he tells me about the day that he spent as if high, though he hadn't been smoking for a week prior to it, where everything struck him either as hysterically funny or terribly sad, and he'd alternate between tears and laughter with appalling swiftness. We talk for a long while and I invite him to come with John and me to Town Hall this evening, and he says he might, but doesn't. I get involved in typing more Mattachine articles and look up to find it's 7 pm, and I just have time to shave and shower and get down to meet John at 7:45 without eating, but the billboard in front of Town Hall says it's just a "new talent" black show that neither of us wants to see, and I detour into Nedicks to have a greasy steak sandwich platter for $1.25 with sexy hustlers around, and we see the end of an amateurish and bloody "No Blade of Grass" and the whole of a good but not THAT good "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with the Apollo audience (see following page), and we're out at 11:30 to subway to John's and get to bed.
DIARY 2730
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12. Up for the first sex in a long time, since both of us decide we'd been without it for long enough. Out of bed fairly late, and by the time I'm home and finished with breakfast, I almost forget about "Cobra Woman" and watch part of it, with Maria Montez playing two equally bland women, and in trying to get more of the items on the list out of the way, I call Alex and GET her, and she says she'll be going to the New Yorker, and I can pick up "Acid House" at 2:05. I decide it'll be a good day to go up to Mattachine, so I settle down and quickly type up the stencils for the restaurants and the new Member Profiles, and then it's 2 pm and she hasn't called yet, so I decide I might as well continue typing, and do the Articles of Incorporation to take with me to Henry's tonight, though I forget to proofread it. I'm worried that it seems longer than I thought to type all the Mattachine stuff, and then I'm constantly referring to the dictionary to find how to hyphenate words, and for spelling, and debating how I can get around the typing errors I make. John had decided to go to the Lincoln Center library this morning at noon after a meeting at DTW to study for his new book, but he arrives HERE about noon, saying that the library was closed on Lincoln's birthday, so he comes here to type for a bit while I continue reading, and do the dishes and sew a button on my coat, and then type out a NEW list of projects from all the ones I've made up with everyone's suggestions, and there are so many (62) that I have to number them by 2's most of the time, and single spaced when they're within the same category, such as office or Mattachine Times, and even then there isn't TOO much room for expansion. I also shine my shoes and wash the yellow shirt, happy now to have hot water since there's no one around on Saturday to work on anything. The humidity was terribly high this morning when I got in: 85%, and the water was dripping down the walls and the mirrors were steamed and the base of the bathroom cabinet was a pool of condensate. Shower and subway down to Henry's with John's briefcase with the Incorporation typing in it, and get the copy of the Constitution that I'd marked up, and settled into the party (see next pages).
DIARY 2739
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13. Wake late at 9 and cuddle before getting out of bed at 9:15. Dress quickly and get down to the subway in time to get home by 9:55, giving me enough time to get out of my clothes, shave again, wash my face, and change shirts and coats, since it was raining very, very hard outside, and I decided it would be best to take an umbrella and my raincoat, since my awful pink thing just wouldn't do in the light of day, and I had fantasies of being taken along for the day by Faulton and Rodney and Norman, and meeting more glorious people, and John even said that I could invite Rodney and his roommate over to dinner if I wanted to, since the ham that he'd wanted to cook last night after the Messer party was still uncooked. I subwayed up to Cathedral Parkway, waiting ages for the subway, and out into the driving rain past three gay guys walking arm-in-arm under one umbrella, and I was sure they were going to Pittenger. Get into the church about 11:15, and the service is only barely underway, and am rather gratified to see that I'd put on my green shirt and the vestments were green, that Rodney was celebrant, Faulton was co-celebrant who read the Gospel, and Pittenger gave the sermon (see next page). Out dazed after the reception at 12:40, being told the time by a barely literate alderman who was putting the things from the coffee hour away, and subwayed down in the still-pouring rain to my place. Had a quick meal because I was starved, and then didn't even feel like going through the Times, I merely felt like some music, and then I thought I might smoke, so I did (see following pages). Came out of it enough by five to dress and change and subway to John's at 6, and kept a tight rein on myself as we had drinks and we talked about the services and I confessed to "smoking and listening to music" all day. The ham was too thick, not very well flavored, and rather tough, and the asparagus was covered with a too-spicy chivey/tarragony sour cream sauce, but we got through it rather nicely, and I brought along my pass from the Drag Ball, and we got out in the still-windy evening about 8:30 for Man's Country (see subsequent pages), and returned to John's even before midnight for bed.
DIARY 2748
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14. Up feeling awful, and had to let three trains pass by before I could squeeze myself into the train from Clark Street, and even had to shove too hard before boarding the local at 42nd Street. Not even a commuter and I'm disgusted with riding the subways! In at 9:30 to find that the plumbers hadn't come in yet, but they do fairly soon and get the pipe fixed quickly so that I can get down to typing the articles for the Mattachine Times, since Charles Mountain called and said he wanted a meeting to paste up the articles this week sometime, and I said that it would have to be either Wednesday evening or Saturday afternoon, and he agreed that those were good times, and that he'd call me. So I had to assume it was Wednesday and finish everything by then. Got into trouble with corrections, and finally had to get out to buy some correction fluid that took an hour to dry in the 75% humidity of the room, and even when I typed on the thick tackiness of the surface, the letters blurred, and later Marc said they'd have to be retyped. Continue through the afternoon, cursing myself for letting myself in for such a tremendous labor, and then not doing it little by little, but encouraged by the fact that much of what I'm typing is merely filler, and it'll be getting a good portion completed for subsequent issues, though I don't plan to be typing the Times for the rest of the year. Get disgusted with the liquid and go back to Correctype, which I hope will be good enough, and by the time I've been typing a number of hours, I no longer care WHAT happens to the text. Put still-frozen hamburger on to fry while I shower after exercising, and I feel I want to get myself back into condition. Eat the hamburger and subway to Henry's to proofread the Incorporation papers and am relieved to find that I've made no errors, and get to the classroom to excuse myself for the john, and I shit diarrhea endlessly, probably from the hamburger, though I didn't think it could hit so fast, and enjoyed the graffiti, and feeling drained, and went back into the classroom for the talk (see next pages).
DIARY 2751
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15. Wake to cuddle briefly and get onto the A train hoping to avoid the crowds on the IRT, but I hear later from the Mattachine people that there were awful floods around 42nd Street from a broken water main, and the subway was greatly delayed and I didn't get home until about 10 am, though still too early to get any mail, though there's been powerful little of it lately. Get quickly back into the typing of the Mattachine Times, and I decided to take John's advice and leave the heat on and windows open to reduce the humidity in the place, and subsequently when I tried the white-out on the sheet, it dried in about 4 minutes and the overtyping was quite perfect, so I arranged it so that I had lots of little fixing-up things to do while the white stuff was drying, and I finished, even to the proofreading, just before 1, so that I could watch "Blond Venus" from 1-3 on Channel 5, and they're getting some great movies in their time slot. Marlene Dietrich looked awfully silly washing the young child at the beginning, but she was convincingly scruffy later as she took care of him in her escape from the police trying to give the child to her husband, a too-snotty Herbert Marshall, and it made a nice contrast at the end when she washed the kid again in equally inappropriate diamonds and slit dress. And a nice teary happy ending through her little song about their meeting. I've washed the floor from the mess from the plaster, since they said they wouldn't plaster until next week, and I interpreted that as almost never, and John helped me move back the desk after I vacuumed the area clean, and we chatted a bit before showering and getting out to the Paris Brest Restaurant, which was even better than I'd hoped it would be, though the duck a l'orange was a bit on the fatty side, and we finished early enough for him to look for a movie on 42nd Street and me to walk down to Mattachine at WSDG quite early, watching everyone set things up, and the people entering for the Troy Perry-Virginia Graham tape. The meeting was rather awful (see next page), and lasted much too late, and I got back at 11:45 to find John in bed, so I watched a campy Bette Davis in "The Anniversary" and bedded at 1:45 am.
DIARY 2753
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16. I do John and he does me in the morning, which is fine after a long period of non-activity. I don't feel like typing anything, so I start reading "Ticket that Exploded" and decide that it should really be read STONED, since it seems obvious in parts that it was WRITTEN stoned. So I smoke and read, but it doesn't seem to be any clearer, there are no flashing insights, but the constant sexual references get me excited, and I read on trying to get to a good sex scene, hoping to be "carried away" by something new and incredibly different, but it doesn't happen, so I take my hard cock to the closet and get out the pornography, and tease and tease myself until I come a second time, and sit around feeling high and looking at all the lovely pictures, and then tease myself endlessly another time, looking at my hard cock in the sunlight and coming up with a new depth to my musical fantasies (see next page). By this time I'm pretty much down, and anyway I'm down enough by 1 pm to watch "Valiant Is the Name for Carrie" until 3, eating popcorn only because I'm too lazy to make anything to eat, and because it's a typical popcorn movie about a valiant mother who does everything for her children, including pleading guilty at a trial so that her sordid past won't be brought up to embarrass her children. Finish with that and decide to finally end reading "Ticket that Exploded" so that I won't be hooked into the smoking-coming syndrome with it again, and so that it won't affect my OWN writing style, and do so, then come again before putting away the sex stuff, making four times today! Then decide to move the books around to put away the Heinlein collection and all the hang-overs on other shelves, and take a couple of hours dusting and arranging with good feelings of accomplishment, and then finish vacuuming to fix everything up, mushing through the carpets which feel damp because of the humidity from the pipe, and then have franks and beans for dinner and get to John's late at 10:30, instead of 10, and he says he's tired but looking forward to the evening, but we smoke and I can't stay up because of all my coming earlier, and so we go along and just stop, which gives us lots to talk about on Sunday morning (see following page). Bed at 11:30.
DIARY 2756
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17. Up discouraged about last night and get out early and get in to my place about 3:45, having caught a train after a fairly long early-morning wait from 8:10 to 8:20. Decide it's time for a haircut, so I get into the barber shop in the subway lobby and say I want a razor cut, and the young barber whacks off lots and lots of hair, which I like, leaving it too long in front, which I tell him to cut, and he sprays with water and fluffs dry, so I can't really tell what it looks like, and he takes $3 plus tip from me with thanks for his just under an hour job. Up to my place and amazed to see how short he HAS cut it, and with some bit of relief get down to typing, but can only do six pages, and that only takes care of two days, so I'm catching up, but very slowly. Read the mail as it comes in and spend lots of wasted time doing not much of anything before watching "The Big Broadcast of 1936" on the 1-3 slot, and most of it's just terrible, except for some silent slapstick comedians who build a house then blast it down, and marvel at the sheer awfulness of the Spanish accent on the chrome-plated blond obviously from Flatbush. Read through a bit of the morals book just to do something (and of course I went out to unemployment in the morning), and the time passes in ways I don't realize, except that I have an awful feeling about wasting time. I know I went to the bank to cash a check for the weekend expenses with Bernie Mazie coming on Saturday, and then stopped into Marlboro's and Bookmaster's just to see if there were more interesting books, so I probably typed the six pages in the afternoon before showering the hair out of my hair to get to Mattachine at 5:30 (see next page), and leave quite forcefully at 9:35, to get back here to find John's read the letter I got from Paul and the card from Laird, but he's gone out to the baths or sauna, and I wait around for him to come back, finally smoking at midnight and putting on Berlioz's "Requiem" at 12:30, and he comes in in just a few minutes, and I ask him to smoke, but he says he's very tired, so I just fall into bed and he says there was one very kissy fellow that I'd like, whom he'd invited to the orgy on Wednesday for me to meet, and we kiss and I drop immediately off to sleep just before 1 am.
DIARY 2758
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18. John's up and out while I lay exhausted, completely limp. I get home to buy groceries and put things away and wash the dishes for Bernie's arrival tomorrow, and then start typing, interrupting myself to watch "Make Way for Tomorrow," with an old Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore playing old people who have to be separated, shuttled back and forth among their children, and then she's sent off to an old folk's home, which she hates, while he's sent off to die in California. Sad. Have lunch of tuna fish during this, and then get back to typing, doing 13 pages for the day, with some assorted Mattachine things, and then watch "House of Frankenstein" between 4:30 and 6, pretty good though completely episodic, and then I have dinner and wash and shave and get into the subway at 7:45, knowingly early, and get down to Dance Theater Workshop way early at 8:05, and John has nothing for me to do, so I sit around looking at Dance Magazines until 8:30, and then the doors won't open until a little after 9 because the Contemporary Dance Theater of Philadelphia has technical problems and can't start until about 9:10. "Purcell" is extremely hampered by too-small space, but probably it isn't very interesting anyway. "Freefall for Sheila" stars an absolutely stacked and enormous-control-into-the-bargain Sheila Karmatz, who dances some new, some old, mostly middling to good movements. "Improvisation in Grey" has one, two, three, then four went into Claude's "Scenes" (with tree, grass, wind, squirrel, sea, sort of joining a picture), and "five" went into sculptor and sculptee, but the only gratuitous audience participants were from Philly, and they got into some mildly amusing things. Intermission was a bore, "Percussion Dances" used drums, claps and slaps which were fun, clappers which kept breaking, foot chimes which were awful, and foot rhythms. "Premises," "Look of Eagles" and "Star Setter" went downhill, if that's possible to believe, and we were happy to leave for John's just before 11, where we drank a bit and talked just the tiniest bit about what seemed to be happening to us in the line of indifference, but we really get into that topic on Sunday morning. Chat tiredly and fall asleep at 12.