1972 5 of 8
DIARY 3183
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19. Wake at 7 and decide not to stay in bed, so I'm up and onto the subway for home by 7:45, type 9 pages to get up to date through the weekend, write a letter to Bill, and then Paul arrives (after the moving company calls to confirm my move on next Thursday) at 12:10, and we chat about our lives, and he calls Ed Lowman, who invited the three of us to dinner, and I call John and we all talk, and then leave for the deli for lunch, which Paul insists on paying for, and then I get down to the Museum of Modern Art for "Cobra" with Rudolph Valentino as a long-suffering man enamored first of Nita Naldi, who dies in a hotel fire, and then of his best friend's secretary, whom he leaves so that they can be happily married. Out at 3:15 and walk back home to finish up 10 address changes (cursing the Drake company because the new tags haven't arrived yet), and Paul's back quickly from the Continental, not having been upstairs because he thought you had to have paid for a room to go upstairs, and only an old man did him and he didn't find anything that he liked. I work on five job letters, using up the last of the old resumes with the old address and BOTH telephone numbers on them, and get finished in time to go out for the laundry that I dropped off this morning when I went to the supermarket for what I hope may be the last time, except for one or two more items like milk, and back up at 5:15 to shave and shower and brush my teeth and finish at 5:30 for Paul to fix himself up, he'd been napping while I typed, by 5:45, and we get a cab across to 48th, south of UN Plaza and up to Ed Lowman's still sumptuous apartment. John arrives a few minutes later, we feast on almonds, brie, and cheddar cheese and pimiento spread on crackers, drinks, and then lamb and a mock-cheese soufflé and tasty beans, starting with jellied madrilène topped with sour cream and caviar, and we enjoy the view and almost all the conversation, though it gets slow at times, and we talk about our trip mainly, and he tells about his new house in Garrison, and we promise to invite him to dinner some evening. Out at 11:15 and John's home, but Paul and I look at the parks on the East River, then grab a cab home at midnight, John reading the Voice, and bed, VERY hot.
DIARY 3184
THURSDAY, JULY 20. John and I both wake at about 6:30, for some reason, and we tussle about in bed, both coming, and then doze off again before we all wake and get out of bed at 8. John leaves and Paul and I go off for my unemployment signing, and we wander through the still-uncompleted concourses of the World Trade Center, being able only to look up at the lobby (where the pointed arches are truncated by the floor above, which is a poor detail of design) which is so proportioned as to seem quite small, even though it's enormous. Over to sign, then subway up to the Village, where Paul stops at three places (and buys a duplicate book) (after I tell him to watch out for that) to buy about a dozen books about anti-Vietnam feelings in America, and we stop for cheeseburgers at the ice cream place, gorging on hot fudge sundaes at the end of the meal, and then he's off to shop at Macy's while I'm home with his books to read through the book of poems, so some packing and reading, and then work on the notes I took from the library, typing up about seven pages of my ideas for the book and articles for "India Abroad." Type one diary page. Pauls' back and I'm working in the bedroom while he sleeps, and I phone John Kim again and Paul wants to meet him, so I root through the packed boxes to get out the spare set of keys to that he can wait around until after I leave for Mattachine, without having to go out when I leave. Subway down to the office and Dick's working there again, still on the shelves, and Jack Goldstein goes into the most incredible set of talks about his "duplex" which is "apartment 32A," and when I say "Oh, not 32AW or 32 ARE, so it must be across the whole side?" and he says it is: 6½ rooms, which is about what Ed has, so something sounds funny there, too. He's "invited" the Rolling Stones to his apartment for an après-concert bash, booze for the straights, Columbian grass for the "ins," and he recommends that his guests don't ask them for their autographs, just get their pictures taken with them, and he talks about all the free tickets he has for the performances, even though he insists the PRESS has to pay for them (see next page). Home and bed early.
DIARY 3186
FRIDAY, JULY 21. Paul's up and out without my even waking up: John's said goodbye to him, taken back his keys, and locked the door after him. I'm amazed that I slept through the whole thing. After John leaves I go out to search the liquor store across the street for boxes, but they don't have any, as doesn't the supermarket, so I'm back to the ever-faithful liquor store on Broadway, and luckily the trash baskets on the corner of Broadway and 57th are seldom full, so I can take out one heavy box filled with the insides of all the 6-9 boxes I'm taking with me and dispose of it without lugging it for a long distance. Up to the apartment and get to work on the insides of the closets, and there's just so much STUFF! [Now I've just re-thought the day and it's all WRONG!] I'd packed the stereo set and plants and everything that I wanted to take in the car last night (John doing the plants gloriously in the large cardboard box), and we load them into the car just before 8 am, when he has to leave, and I get to John's to look through the Columbia Desk Encyclopedia for names of famous Indians, hoping to do it in a few hours, but it takes 40 minutes to do 100 pages, so it should take 480 minutes for the 1200 pages, or 8 hours. Get through to the beginning of the S's, feeling rather silly as time stretches on and I stop for a tuna fish lunch, but finish about 5 and get out to the subway, getting there about ten minutes late again, and since his wall clock is ten minutes fast, it looks like I get there 20 minutes late. But we talk and he pays off his staff in cash, we watch the rain pour down, and we decide that my outline for the book is confusing, and what I should do is write the first chapter to show him after his return from India to New York a week from Monday, and I should call for an appointment. Dash across to Grand Central and take the terribly time-consuming shuttle, and get down to Mattachine just at 7 when John gets in, throwing down the box of clothes that Ray left behind in the apartment, and we go to Magda's to eat, fairly good for a low price, except for wine bought in a store, and back to John's to find he's put all the stuff behind the dining room table, and we get to bed without touching.
DIARY 3187
SATURDAY, JULY 22. I'd made out a list of things I wanted to do before the move, and one of them was to see Bernstein's "Mass," and I had to see it today since it was the last day. Subway from John's at 10 and pick up a fifth-row center seat; call Avi and he's not home, call Arnie at Norma's and she says he's gone to California to see his mother put into a home, where she's not expected to live (cancer) for more than a few months. Pick up some more cartons from the liquor store, returning in a sweat to retrieve the $9 ticket I left on one of the crates, and pack some more before having lunch and smoking and walking up to the performance (see next page). The show's good only AFTER the grass wears off, and then it's not bad, though rather tiring sitting through the un-intermissioned two hours. Subway directly back to John's carrying nothing with me because of the performance for the first time in ages, and we have hamburger dinner on the little typing table in the living room, since the dining room is filling up with my transferred junk, and the painter's been in to start on the apartment, and Randy Puddy is quite cute and brown-eyed. The heat is still on, one of the most sustained periods of hot clammy weather in recent years, and even the fan directly on the bed and bodies at John's doesn't really help, and my air conditioner seems almost ineffectual against the heat of the sun beating down on the black, heat-absorbing roof, aided by the chimney-flue heat up the elevator shaft, making the car the tip of a red-hot piston of air. Debate what to do this evening, and I suggest the W.C. Fields double at the Theater 80 St. Marks, but it turns out I'd seen BOTH "International House" with Fields landing in his autogyro and his "Oh, it's a pusseh" line, and "Big Broadcast of 1938," with the race of the lines Gigantic and Colossal, "Thanks for the Memories," and Kirsten Flagstad. The screen is gray and grainy from back-projection and poor film, and the seats almost impossibly small. Back about 11:30, very tired, after looking listlessly at the people on the streets, and we don't even have to smoke to get to bed and fall asleep, particularly since I'll wake at 5:45 with the sunshine.
DIARY 3189
SUNDAY, JULY 23. Read the Times after waking up very early and lying there moping about the move, and into the new apartment to start cutting down the pads, and thankfully the bedroom pad doesn't have to be cut at all. Then out at 12 and get to my place to drink the rest of the souring milk and sit down to slave through the puzzles while watching a Laurel and Hardy film festival on TV, each movie taking only an hour and 15 minutes WITH two commercials each shot, so they're about hour films only. See "Bohemian Girl" again, and the new ones "Way Out West," with an incredible chase, tickle and laugh scene with Laurel, and "Saps at Sea" and "Blockheads." That runs to 6, during which time I did nothing on packing, of course, and call John to say I'll be late, then get to his place for dinner, and then across to watch Randy putting the finishing touches on the bedroom, and John and I get started scraping down the windows, but I quickly graduate from the single razor blade held in a gloved hand to the big scraper, which threatens to raise welts on my fingers, and I get tired and want to go to bed, but he insists we have to do the rest of the scraping on the glass doors between the rooms, and then HE wants to go to bed, and I insist that the living room pad should be cut almost to shape, so he helps with that for a bit, but the scissors is very dull, and he's raised blisters on his fingers when he cut the BEDROOM pad with his dull things, so I have to suffer through cutting the living room one, which is almost 50% longer. Scissors become impossible and I find that a razor blade scoring the cut works much better, and it's only then I remember the cutting tool Joe used on my rug, and when I bring it the next day, I'm flabbergasted over how EASY it is to use. Make all kinds of jokes about using the "right tool for the job" and it's absolutely true. The people upstairs drill their presence into my hate very early: they have the radio and TV going loudly ALL evening, and with the French doors all open, the sound travels so easily it sounds like it's coming from the same apartment. So I have to get used to tramping feet over my head again! John's in bed at 11, and I join him at 12, after showering and getting into bed HIGHLY unshaven in the heat.
DIARY 3190
MONDAY, JULY 24. Out of John's again without sex,. And I'm getting tired of having no sex because we're both working on the apartment, and he's hard at work on his book. We've had a fruitless argument about the sunshine in the bedroom, and he says that I should absolutely get up when I want to, since that's not going to bother him, and he says if we want sex we'll ask for it, so I shouldn't worry about the lack of personal contact by cuddling in the morning. I demand that the new bedroom he light-proof, but he hates my drapes, and when the blinds that he'd ordered come in, he finds that they don't have the expensive bound edges that he ordered, so they have to be sent back, and they won't be ready until about the third of August, so we'll have to sleep in the living room when the bedroom becomes a study and before we can sleep in the back bedroom. Home and I call Avi to tell him my new phone number, and he wonders why I haven't asked him to help me pack, so I do, and he says he'll be over at 1, then 2, and he arrives at 2:45, after having lunch with John Torres, who was robbed and tied into his bathtub, the thieves calling a friend to untie him so he wouldn't starve to death. I watch "Rose Bowl" on TV, with a no-body-shot Buster Crabbe taking a second seat to the fairly cute Tom Brown until 3, then Avi packs the rest of the books while I handle the files and the closet stuff, and he takes the dishes to finish off the boxes, so we're out to the supermarket to pick up eight egg crates, which are marvelous, and come back to start on one or two of them, and then he leaves about 5 and I work on some more, and then get to John's with meat for dinner, and my refrigerator is practically empty for the move. Since no one else has come up to look at the apartment, I presume the super found someone to take it, but I still don't know what to do with the air conditioner, though Avi might buy it, but it just doesn't seem to be good for much recently. Work around the new apartment doing various things, but we're quite tired, John saying he hasn't been able to sleep because of worrying about ME waking up with the light! To bed, again without sex, and he's angry about my Museum of Modern Art movies for the next two days, but I wouldn't miss the chance to clear up TWO Oscars!
DIARY 3191
TUESDAY, JULY 25. Up sexless to finish off the last bit of pad-trimming before the rugs arrive today, and get back to my place stopping off for more crates and boxes, and I fill them all up before taking the address-change forms and the airmail package to the post office before getting to MMA at 1:50 to see "Wings." They don't have any of the original tinting mentioned for the red-blue aerial scenes, but it's obvious that they did cartooning to put in the "flames" from the smoking planes that went "down" into the clouds before the "crashes" which usually didn't take place, and for the "preddy bubbl's" during the drunk scene which had Buddy Rogers sitting on the floor jerking off an enormous bubbling bedpost. The climax was fun, too, with the two heroes clasping each others heads and necks, with only one heartfelt cheek-kiss before Arlen died. The lip reading yielded innumerable "son of a bitch's" and "bastards" and "Goddamns," which were sort of fun. Clara Bow was fairly cute, too, and the bombing of the little French town was very effectively done, and the columns of troops stretching to infinity were effective, and dozens of guys MUST have gotten hurt from the "simulated" explosions. Out very contented at 4, and back for more boxes and more packing, eating dinner before going to Mattachine for the emergency Director's meeting at 7:30, which was pretty awful, with lengthy talking about nothing until we agreed to let the three guys try to put on dances unless they lost Mattachine $250 of its remaining $500 bankroll. Then Renee Cafiero spoke, and she was quite a droning bore, saying not much that was new, except that Bella Abzug no longer seems an unblemished politician, McGovern's expediency seems questionable, particularly in the perfidy of having TWO gay-plank rebuttals, and the collared Itkin seemed too far out to be believable. I walked out causing no little tsurus when Charles Mountain and Sergio and Alan all wanted to talk with me, and I got back to the apartment where John was waiting for me, and the air conditioner hardly seemed to be working, and I'd spent a lot of the day getting my clothes into bags to get into the car to take to his place, and with other boxes of stuff, there was quite a load. Again bed without hardly any touching.
DIARY 3192
WEDNESDAY, JULY 26. I've been counting the days to the move: first a week, then five days, then four, and this morning I'm conscious that there's no FULL day left at 309 W. 57th. Make out a special list of things to do on the next two days when I get up early, and we take all the stuff out to the car and John makes a place so he can see out the back window, and we get to his place and lug all the stuff upstairs into the closet. Decide to take Joe to dinner at Chaumiere tonight, and John WAS going to the beach since the painter's not coming in, but we have to put the rugs down, and he suggests it'll take four hours instead of my estimate of 2, and it does. He put the bedroom rug down himself, and with the grass in the windows and his antique table and a plant at the cross-window, the room looks fabulous. Lug the bedroom stuff into the bedroom, moving drawers from chests and moving chests, and then while he works I get to the cutting of the living room carpet, and though it breaks my heart, it looks great when it's finished and John brings in his large plant from the now-study and puts it at the French doors. It looks like a modern art gallery, we agree: all white and clean with accents of flowers in sunlight from the windows. So it's noon now and I dash home, gobble down tuna for lunch, and get across to the bank to close out my checking and savings accounts and cash my last two unemployment checks, getting to MMA just at 2 for "The Last Command" with Jannings following his "The Last Laugh" plot to a T: the mighty uniformed fallen to collecting small coins, though here he dies after his Last Command "Forward" kills him on a movie set with revolutionist-turned-director William Powell looking on. Out and pick up the Burlington Mill and the Jazz Museum as tribute to my last day in the neighborhood, and see that "Left-Handed" is in its last day, so I'm in to see that at 3:40 and out just before 6 (see next page). More boxes and then shower to get down to La Chaumiere at 7, Joe's late, and we have the veal nest (Joe), the spiced pork (John) and the chicken IN pineapple (me), no wine because John forgot they sold it, and a not-so-spectacular saboyan for dessert. [In the margin I noted the prices: 2 country (veg) quiches $2.00, 1 melon and prosciutto $1.80, pork $5.75, chicken $4.75, nid $5.75, saboyan $4.00, for a total of $24.05, tax of $1.70 for $25.75, and tip of $3.75 for a total of $29.50 for three of us.] Out about 9:30, John exhausted, to the Door Store for a catalog and ideas, and home past the remnants of the Stones riots for John to fall exhausted into bed; I smoked, followed.
DIARY 3194
THURSDAY, JULY 27. John go up and refused to take anything with him, but I forced the wreath on him and he took it. I started filling up the last boxes, finishing off the closets and getting ready for the rest of the kitchen when the bell rang downstairs at 8:30. It was them, three blacks from Hud movers, and the Turk Super showed up to say that the office didn't have my last payment, so I had to give him a MONEY ORDER for the rent or I wouldn't be allowed to use the elevator. Stacks of books sat outside and I begged to use it while I wanted for the bank to open at 9: "I'm not going to vanish in 15 minutes." No, he had his orders. So I dashed to my bank which was opened, I recalled, at 8:30, and got a money order for $225 and thrust it at him, taking Angel up to open up the elevator. So they commenced. I packed and packed while they moved and moved, and I filled up all the boxes and decided I needed more, so dashed across the street, they still didn't have any, so down to Broadway and lugged out six boxes, which I got back upstairs and filled to the top, the last one containing the top of the coffee table, the four casters from the TV set, and the last box from the hall closet. The stupid kid must have dropped the top, because it was bent out of shape and two tiles were missing. They got everything out of the apartment by 10:45, I gave my name and address to the Turk in case anyone wanted to pay me (HA!) for the air conditioner, then realized that I also left the traverse rod on the ceiling, and he said he'd see to it that I got my deposit back. I shouted back that I'd give him a quart of scotch for each $2 of the deposit I saw. They're packing the last of the stuff at 10:50, so I subway down to unemployment, seeing that next week will by my LAST to collect (11 out of 13 for the extension isn't bad), and subway to John's, but they're still not there. Drink some water and eat some breakfast with a quart of milk that I buy, and tell John about the rent fiasco, and at 12:20 the movers are here again, moving IN (see next page). They lug off the desk first, switch the friges for $15, and finish the whole thing by 2:30. Pay them their formal bill of $152.30, and an extra $20 into it, and by 5:30 I'm down to Mattachine (see following page). Back at 10:30, amazed that I only have one POSSIBLE destination. Sleep in living room.
DIARY 3197
FRIDAY, JULY 28. Cuddled just a bit in the morning, not wanting to happen THIS morning what happened yesterday: I wanted sex VERY badly, and so finally went down on John, who was very tired, so he finally had to make me stop. He said he wished I would just cuddle instead of wanting sex all the time, and I was flabbergasted to hear that our roles seemed to be REVERSED from what they were at the beginning of the relationship: when HE wanted sex all the time, and I just sometimes wanted to cuddle (or not to come because I'd just jerked off that afternoon). Then he went to work on the book and I went across to start unpacking the books, moving some of the furniture around to get more space in the center of the floor, then getting the crates out in order and re-alphabetizing the fiction and nonfiction in paperback, and double-stacked everything so that it would all fit in, since two of the bookcases were in the study for reference works. Sat on the floor much of the time, and John ate by himself and I ate by myself. Then back to unpacking, stacking everything sky-high so that I could SEE what I had to put into the closets, and get about halfway finished when John comes over to say that dinner will be ready in a while, and it's such a blessed feeling of relief to know that we'll be eating together, in the same place, without one of the two of us having to travel either before or after the meal. When I sat down I was very conscious of having been on my feet all day: my legs were far more tired from standing than my arms were tired from lugging around all the boxes of books. John has his plans about how the bookshelves would go, and it's fantastically expensive, so we decide to keep only the two main ones: one as a room-divider which will be double-shelved with the stereo set on it, another against the wall just as you come in the door. After dinner there are a few other things to clear up, but very quickly the bed is made and we're into it. It's short, feels differently from either his bed or my bed (which I don't have anymore, since I left it in the old apartment, except for the folding bottom frame), and we didn't smoke or have sex before going to bed---no, we DID smoke, and we DID have sex, and it was highly successful, for my first in eight days, and I slept WELL.
DIARY 3198
SATURDAY, JULY 29. Up quickly and breakfast, then back into the storage room to try to finish up the task of unpacking today. Things got more complicated: I'd taken over boxes of kitchen things to be sorted through, to find what's kept in the main kitchen, and what's kept in the second kitchen, which can't be put in there yet because it hasn't been painted yet. Randy came in at 9:45, after saying he was going to be in at 8, since he was only working until noon. (No, he was here YESTERDAY till noon, because he was catching a 1 pm train for the ferry to Fire Island for the weekend, where he'd relax from his physical work to make money to put himself thru college for psychology.) I started putting things into the tool closet just to get them out of the way, and finally cleared off the top of John's cabinet so that I could pile luggage and other things on top of that. Finally got the stereo set out of their boxes so I could put the forms back INTO them and put them up top, and took the hooks and pins out of the drapes so they could be taken to the cleaners to see how they looked when they were NEW (and maybe they can STILL be used in the bedroom). Everything was piled all over the place, but lunch was a success because I mentioned to John I'd rather eat together, and he asked if I wanted a salad, and I said I sure did, and it was very nice. The radio kept me company through the day, and I lugged things back and forth: boxes that I'd brought ahead of time from John's apartment, empty cartons to the study to be tossed out for trash. One of the last things done was put up the wreath on a permanent hook in the closet, screw in hooks for clothes and umbrellas, and take the last of the things back and forth between the two apartments except for the final measures which will probably go on for months. But I could see most of the storage room floor, scraped the window, and felt good about a long day's work. Over at 7 for dinner, chicken fricassee with cherries, John doing all the shopping so far, including the stuff that I wanted, and we sat back pleased with the wine and he decided it would be a nice evening for Man's Country. I'd gotten out the water pipe from RCOA, and we used that, and I put in my contacts for the first time in ages and went stoned down the street (see next page). Back at 1:30, so is John, and bed.
DIARY 3200
SUNDAY, JULY 30. Look at my stopped watch at 9:35, but it's really 9:15 when we get out of bed, John amazed at the lateness. Skim the Times, realizing I can't clip out articles I want to save until John looks at the paper, and get across the hall at 11 to watch a film on Sufism on Camera Three, back to read EB about it, then settle into typing the diary until 1, when I'm back across to watch "If I Were King," with a sonorous Ronald Coleman making unbelievable the plot that he could speak as Grand Chamberlain without being recognized as Francois Villon. The final battle scenes were pretty good, but Basil Rathbone was too fairy-tale evil with his "heh-heh-heh" of a laugh. That's till 3 and John's working on the bathroom cabinet, and he tells me to mix the spackle for the surrounding wall, and I think he's going to do it, but he leaves it to me, and I'm furiously frustrated by starting with too much water, having to spill some gray sludge out when I find the dish won't hold all the powder I must add, and frowning take it to the bathroom still too mushy, and work and work and work it until it dries in the air, finally getting it into SOME kind of shape, but worn out with the anger and copelessness of me and the situation. Back to finish typing 14 pages of diary, then work briefly on the article for Raju before 7, when I'm BACK across to watch "Flesh and Fantasy" a fairly picturesque film about Robert Cummings falling in love with an ugly girl behind a Mardi Gras mask who becomes beautiful through love, Edward G. Robinson feeling he HAD to kill someone, finally the palm reader who TOLD him that, and Charles Boyer falling from his high wire (the strangest of all situations) to the accompaniment of a scream from Barbara Stanwyck. At 9, when it's over, John decides to smoke the grass I found on the street, so the pipe's passed before the movie ends, we lay on the sofa for a bit, then I go to the floor, feeling completely worn out, and he doesn't even join me, and when he does I get hung up by the feel of stubble along his stomach, which he shaved rather than cut this time, and by about 9:45 it's obvious that we're going straight to bed without any sex at all, and I don't even clean my teeth or shower (the slow-cooked evening steak was poor), just fall asleep.
DIARY 3201
MONDAY, JULY 31. Wake early this morning, crawling out of bed at 7 to write the first paragraphs of Raju's article, cursing myself that I didn't do more of it before, and when I get the first draft of the three pages typed in about a half an hour, then go to working on the resume, asking John's advice on the spacing, and try three times to type the final version, the "M" giving me trouble in the numerous IBM's, but finish just in time to shower and call Raju's secretary at 10:15, and she says I should KEEP my noon appointment, though I STILL think I won't be seeing him, even though I'm willing to show him the first draft as finished if he does. Perfect connections with the subway get me to 51st Street in half an hour, with enough time to get three xerox copies of the resume for 48¢, so that I can give the original to John to xerox at Dutton tomorrow, and get to Hutchins and Steve Warren at 11 to have a pleasant interview and make an appointment for an interview at Rapidata on Thursday. He said I could ask Melanie to type when I'm finished, and everyone gathers around to watch me clacking away at the unfamiliar Olympic to get a rough finished draft which I'm not happy with, but it's 12 already and there's nothing more I can do. Dash downtown in the drizzling rain, feeling very uncomfortable in the humidity and my suit, and get to sit in the secretary's office for ten minutes before Raju passes through and asks me to come in. I sit, he looks at his crowded desk, I say something about being surprised that he agreed to see me today, and he asks if I can't come back at 9 am tomorrow. I grin inside and say "Yes," and again take the infinitely wearying shuttle across to get in at 1 to find John eaten already, needing to go to Jersey at 2 to check the color red for the DTW brochure. I have lunch and read more of "Magic Mountain" (see following page), call Joe and Avi for dinner on Friday, and retype the Indian article in the FINAL draft, finish the list of Indian names for S-Z in the Viking encyclopedia. Go down the list of things to do and call David to see him tomorrow at Radio City Music Hall, zip through six address changes, including letters to Enzo and Elaine, and get into the shower at 9 pm, through for the day. The vodka sours worked on me all evening like grass, making the last of the chicken and cherries taste just great. John wants up at 6, having to buy paint and go to Jersey again, and I have a bizarre series of dreams through the night when I can't sleep soundly (next page).
DIARY 3204
TUESDAY, AUGUST 1. Wake at 6:05 with vivid memories of the dreams described on 3202, and up to mess around with general duties until 7:30 when I feel safe enough typing without waking Mrs. Johnson in the bedroom below. Type 4 pages to get up to date, then out at 8:25 to Raju, getting there at 9:05, and he finally gives me a check for $40 for one article, saying he has to talk with his staff about HOW (not whether) to publish the series. He says he might call me or I should call him, which doesn't please me either. Walk across to Broadway to subway down to Varick Street, only to find that I can't register as a registrar when I've just moved, so I haven't yet voted in Brooklyn! Get the 345 Adams Street address, then subway up to Radio City to search the underground labyrinth for the post office and a roll of stamps, and for Goldsmith's and a ream of three-hole paper. Still time to kill, so I go to Brentano's and buy five books, then have lunch and get outside the stage entrance of 55 W. 50th at Radio City for David Gleaton to shout down, saying that I can't come in DURING the show, but he gives me a pass for the show, and I say I'll be sitting down front. He comes out carrying a sign onto the walk-around, throws a candy at me as he passes, which surprises and delights me, and the girl behind him completely blows my mind by shouting down "Hi, Bob!" quite loudly, and everyone around me exclaims, and I sit through the rest of the performance with a stupid grin on my pleased face. The Hollidays ARE good, and the Samoan fire-juggler has a gorgeous body, so I decide I'll be BACK to see two stage shows and the movie some other time and tour backstage, and subway down to Theater 80 St. Marks (which is on FIRST Avenue) for "Idiot's Delight," that awful Egri example of a Pulitzer Prize for drek, and "The Dancing Lady," which stars Joan Crawford, not Norma Shearer, but also has Nelson Eddy and Fred Astaire, both of whom get audience applause. Out at 5:15 and up to Pinoy-Pinay for a darkly-salty tasting dinner until 7:30, walk to Cubiculo and walk BACK to pick up "Magic Mountain," then see the first 2/3 the dancers and come home at 10:15, to fuss about the apartment and get to bed at 11:15.
DIARY 3206
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2. Wake at 7 and start cuddling, and when the Baby Magic gives out John gets a bit of Albolene Cream, and we both come in enormous relief-giving quantities. Up and shower and I start reorganizing my file cabinet, taking out sections for Professional and Astrology and Psychedelic and adding such sections as India Abroad, Society for Technical Communications/American Society of Indexers, and Receipts, and also Restaurants. Sort things back and forth, putting lots of stuff into the storage cabinet where it belongs, and as a result I have sufficient space on my bookcase for everything which seems necessary. Call Marty and find names of good headhunters, and the fact that there are no fees to be paid in data processing. Write letters to Priya and Cy Mozlin and type two diary pages and clear the desk in general. Then start on the want ads from Sunday (it's always so LATE) and have an early lunch because John has work to do in town, including xeroxing copies of my resume. I go out to register, having a great run-in with the supervisor about my signature, and I have to come up with a "signature" in which one can read most of the letters of my last name, which he says is required for any sort of petitioning or registering work, which I won't be able to do until January 1. Then get groceries, not so much for $12.20, and back to shower and get out onto the cool, slow BMT subway to Randall House and a haircut from Harry, scheduled at 3:30, taking place 4-4:30, as I get within 100 pages of completion of "Magic Mountain." For $8, the haircut is a cut above most of the others I've gotten. We'll see how it wears, to quote my common statement. Back to Hicks at 5:15 to go through some more ads, have dinner at 6, and get out at 6:40 to Mattachine on the dot of 7, lovely service for such a distance, for the staff meeting (see next page). It's over before 9, so I get home, watch last part of "Our Daily Bread," which is worth watching again, wash the dishes and scour the sink just as John gets in at 10:30, dazed from a disappointing "only one" evening at the Man's Country baths. I shower for the third time today, washing my hair to do away with the fluff-dried airiness, and into bed at 11:15. Awakened by a drunken black serenade at 165 from 2-3, wake again at 6, UGH!
DIARY 3208
THURSDAY, AUGUST 3. Up for breakfast and type two pages and wash dishes, Avi calls to say that he WILL be over for dinner on Friday, Joe says that paying for the shelves by check is OK, but that John should call him at 2 to check on the stuff being there to pick up. I phone Harvey Cohen and look through the rest of the paper for ads, getting Harvey and 580 5th Avenue as the only two, and make a list of the many things to do today. Shave and dress and shine my shoes and get out at 11, getting to the last of the unemployment checks for a long time, uptown at 11:30 and have enough time to try the 580 Fifth Avenue address for proofreading correspondence part-time, and it's Scott Meredith of all places, "giving" $55 a week for five days work from 9 am to 2 pm! No, thank you, I do NOT want to take the test! Around the corner and into "Who What Where" game at 11:50, filling out the application ahead of time and taking the test, but not doing as well as others, though I seem to sit well with the assistant producer, who's a doll. Can't answer many of the verbal questions, either, and out at 12:45 to get to Harvey Cohen, who's ALSO cute, at 1, and he suggests I'LL NEVER find a job unless I CONVINCE them I'm not going to be taking off in about five years to wing it in writing AGAIN. He tells of a Chase Manhattan Bank technical writing job at $12,000, but can't get hold of the guy. I say I'll call him back. Out at 1:30 and to the Potagerie to eat, good soup and croissant, but $2.62 IS a bit much. Up at 2 to bookshop again when he STILL hasn't been able to contact CMB, find nothing, walk down to ESB to get to Juanita Homa at 3, and we talk and talk, she refers me to Gus Oates and Eli Rousso, and he says I might be over-experienced, but Steve Warren said it's IMPOSSIBLE to oversell Eli, so I still don't know. Out at 4:30, surprised at how long I was there, and subway up on the heat-making air-conditioned F train to MMA, wander through the insulated, fragmented Italian display, resolving to return stoned for the movies, and "Volcano" is good ONLY for the eruption of Pelee at the end. Out at 6:30 and down to Mattachine in pouring rain, suit hideous, for an AWFUL night (see next page). Home at 11:35 to a wretched John who's put up the shelves upside down; I have eggs, shower.
DIARY 3210
FRIDAY, AUGUST 4. Up at 7:30 and immediately over to the next apartment to put up the 16" bookshelves, with John's enormous approval, and move all the records and tapes and books and hi-fi equipment onto the shelves. Then over for toast for breakfast, and John brings over the salads for lunch, and the radio's playing nicely and all the books are going onto the shelves in good order. Start making the Mattachine phone calls from last night and the checks on the job calls (though I forget to tell Steve I won't be here until Wednesday), and check back and forth on Jack Goldstein and he SOUNDS like he should be off the staff [FIRST came in during the Gay Pride March, when Don was there alone, asking for psychiatric HELP---if he's a therapist wouldn't he KNOW?], and Arnie calls and threatens to talk my ear off, so I ask him to come over, which he does at 2:30, and he tries to fix the princess phone, tells me about the $200-a-week job at the New York Times, and while John naps we go over and finish piling stuff onto the big bookcase, I start on the bathroom ledge, toilet, sink, tub, and finally floor, getting the majority of the junk off, then at 5 start on the other bookcase, which goes very quickly, and by 6 all the books in the storage room have been moved out into the living room, and there are a few feet left over, but there isn't enough room for ONE shelf of very oversize books. Start vacuuming but the thing fills up, and come across the hall at 7:25 and meet Avi coming up the steps with a house gift of cherry-chocolate cordial, and John's in the shower, I go in, Joe enters just as I'm ready, the blender spins futilely, needing a new rubber grommet, for the daiquiris, which we have from a shaker, we look at the new apartment, everyone loves the new bookcase rigs, Joe suggests piano wire to hold together the bowing supports, we're back over to the appetizers of spinach-stuffed tomatoes, and the soft-shelled crabs are very anatomical, but I cut into them, hack off a piece, and the taste is all in the breading, the texture is rather nice, and it's a grand success, though I don't like the gumminess of okra. Dessert of lady-finger charlotte russe is fabulous, they leave about 10:30, I wash all the dishes and we smoke my second-generation grass and lie down to sleep, going off dreamily to no sex.
DIARY 3211
SATURDAY, AUGUST 5. Wake and laze and up to type three pages and write two letters to the Schaffers filled with stamps, stamping a third envelope for John to send, and over to search for the picture wire which has completely vanished, and get to work on the kitchen floor, having to spread scouring powder around over water and brush away with a stiff brush before the razor is applied to get rid of the final bits of paint, and the six squares that I can do at once look fine, but it goes very slowly. John comes over with lunch about 2:30, when I'm desperate for food, and we sit and chat, then I get back to the floor (I keep thinking I must have done something else today, but can't think what that would have been). He comes in later to wash the windows with an extension onto the squeegee. Since we had lunch so late he doesn't want to have dinner, but when he starts cooking a hamburger for me, he decides to eat his beef tartare right then, so we've both eaten when we get into the car at 6 to go to DTW to pick up a light that we have to take down tomorrow, and John gets many unemployment checks for someone, which will make them happy, and get over to the movie at 7:30 to see the end of "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" again. John's feeling very depressed about not having any free time, and is generally tired, and remarks during the day about how unhappy he is that we're not having sex so much: there's just so much else to think about. He rather fruitlessly wonders if he'd had more spare time if we weren't moving, and I figure there's no alternative: he wouldn't have had anything with which to fill his time, he would have relaxed more. He's tired and depressed, but "Harold and Maude" is so wacky and well-acted by kiddish Bud Cort and coltish Ruth Gordon that he cheers up considerably, and "Hospital" is so manic and convincing before its cop-out ending of the wacky Rigg-father, that he ends up leaving the theater saying he enjoyed himself immensely, which is a relief, because if the movies had been bad, he would have felt dreadfully depressed about the whole thing. I'm glad they were good too. Very tired back across the bridge, I buy a copy of the Times, read it while watching the last hour of "Our Daily Bread," and get into bed about 12:30, hardly touching, though he says "I love you."
DIARY 3212
SUNDAY, AUGUST 6. He's up and working around the place before I get up about 8:30, and there's a flurry of packing and I don't secure the bookshelf, but don't, to my surprise, end up worrying that it will collapse during the stay in Washington. Leave the garage about 9 am after mailing the last letter to Boguslaw, and John drives all the way through New Jersey (what a sad state: only to be gotten THROUGH on the way to somewhere else). At 11 we're at the Delaware Memorial Bridge getting gas, and I drive for the next two hours down to the outskirts of Washington at 1, when he takes the near 193, rather than the far 193, and we get temporarily lost, then to the DTW house, where Jeff in the back yard in a Hawaiian-patterned slip is happy to see us, and we get told about the swimming party tonight and the chili dinner, so that we have the day planned when we leave the house at 2:20 for Rock Creek Park and lunch under the trees of tuna and salmon. Stop off to visit Pearce's Mill, colorful, and the art barn where John likes a print, and back into the car to Paul's, where we have to scout up Mrs. Borchert before getting the keys, and when we're inside we're so fatigued we decide to stay indoors until this evening, John takes a nap, and I settle down to read the Times and actually FINISH "The Magic Mountain" which seems to have been around for the better part of this year. Shower and back to the house, chat about the poster and dance matters, and I sit and browse through books because I don't feel part of the group, particularly when Cindy sits everyone down and goes through the schedule for the following week. Chili is tasty, and we leave about 9 pm to follow a twisting road map to the Shor Villa in Chevy Chase, where there is a torch-lit colored-lighted swimming pool complete with a sliding board into its deepest (5') part. Many enjoy it while I sit in a chair watching, then a joint goes around and Barbara Roan says I'm "rehearsing to be a sculpture," and when she starts me talking, says "I'll be leaving you now," and that's the end of socialization. Eat and drink, John brightly conversing with everyone, and we leave about 1, very tired, and get back to Paul's to fall into bed, and I'm beginning to feel slightly sorry that I came.
DIARY 3213
MONDAY, AUGUST 7. Wake and cuddle and have sex again at last, using some gloppy white hand cream John found in the bathroom and put next to the bed last night. He's had most of his plans cancelled out from under him: the Kreigsmans calling Saturday to say they'd be too busy for the picnic on Sunday, and this morning calling the CMP and finding they're all away on vacation. So he decides to see friends at the Library of Congress and I follow his directions to the National Capital Bank of Washington, where I deposit two checks and $10 for $101 balance, walk back by way of the Supreme Court building, which I'd never seen before and whose main chamber is undergoing renovations at this point, buy a card for Schaffer, and look at the travel-poster exhibit in the Library of Congress (what a CONTRAST). Meet John at 11:30 and go to the cafeteria for lunch, where he's depressed by all the "functionaries" at lunch, saying that he now has no chance of working in the LC and wouldn't WANT to if he could, taking to heart MY observation of the massive intractability of much of DC: if the revolution comes, the only thing to do is rope off the Federal Triangle and conduct helicopter tours over the largest outdoor museum in the world. Into the main reading room and catalog to look at all the A. and Zolnierze entries, and take a bus in the rain to the Smithsonian where we look at part of the Arts building, then over to the Freer where the Indian miniatures are in a state of repair and closed, the Tibetan tanka isn't on display, and the flying geese have been rotated with something less interesting. That's about five strikes and the trip looks like a real downer (see next page). Tired again, I've forgotten about the Estate Bookshop, so we beeline for Dumbarton Oaks at 2, finding it closed for the month, and we wander into the adjoining park, delighted at its wildness and vacancy, and come up at the opposite side to WALK back through Georgetown to Paul's stopping off for draft stout and ale, and John has another nap while I finish the Times and read part of "Children Is All," then shower and we're up to the Yenching Palace to meet opinionated talky Sally Ann Kriegsman for a good meal, then to Wolf Trap to a disastrous performance and a worse reception at the Erich Hawkins house, and by the time we're in bed at 1:30, the trip is a DISASTER.
DIARY 3215
TUESDAY, AUGUST 8. John's up about 7:30 to exercise and fix up the apartment for leaving, and when I get out of bed at 9 he's sitting at the window watching the Washington world wander past. I dress and pack and clean up the last bits of mess around the place, and we're into the car at 9:30, noting that the mileage as we leave is PRECISELY 300 miles beyond what it was when we left NYC, so that we drove something like 55 miles in DC itself. North out of town with no trouble, but we're low on gas and have to get off for it, and John keeps on driving until 1, when we try to find a place that will change the oil in the car while we eat, but after trying three places, John gives it up and we eat in an awful Dutch Kitchen place, then continue up the road to Longwood. The fountains in the Italian gardens are on for the first time, and John dozes for a bit in the shade. We wander back to the conservatory, see a new wing being built, roam some planting areas because they're repairing one section, and marvel at the lotus and platter-plants. Back to the car and more gas problems, then I start driving on a bit of the Penn. Turnpike and get off at Route 611, a clogged unpretty road going north which improves only at something like Kinthnicville south of Easton; we stop to buy good peaches and fabulous sweet corn, probably the best part of the trip. Onto 78 beyond the "end" on the map, and drive two rural miles to get onto 22, John dying of fatigue and eye strain, and we're in at 7:30 to have the delicious corn with only a bit of hamburger and the last of the charlotte, and I do the dishes while he waters the plants, which I'd done earlier in the back apartment, call Arnie, and we talk a bit about the trip, and make a list of groceries to get the following day, and John's revived enough to suggest a sensual session. We smoke, set the timer at 15 minutes at 10, and he works over me with muscle-defining tickles which tense me more than relax me, but the sensations are interesting. At my stint I get out the large rock and roll and rub it over him, then play around with his hard-on, but by the time the ding goes at 10:30, we're both worn out again, I get the strangest idea the drawn shades are still up, and we drift off to potted sleep.
DIARY 3216
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9. Up a bit after John's up already, and decide I MUST read through the Sunday ads, which I always do too late, and get a few items of interest, mainly agencies in Brooklyn Heights, when it's 9:10 and I come across the NY Times telephone ad I called Arnie about last night (when he said the indexer position was filled by internal posting of the job), so I call them and find I have a TINY chance still, so I dress and get out at 9:30, touched by the Italian boy who brings around his father to apply for a cleaning job, and am interviewed, saying they're 90% staffed, but they'll keep my application for a future time. Back home at 10:45, have breakfast with a delicious peach, after being interrupted by a call from Marty, who tells me about a new agency he likes, and I tell HIM that *presto* he's been my boss in freelance consulting for the last four years, and he agrees to sell his soul to me and my lies. Start sorting through the stuff on my desk from the trip. Judy Aspinwall from Harcourt Brace says I proofread "Othello"!, then put everything away to wash my shirts and take stuff out to the cleaners which John said are the only best ones in the Heights, but they're terribly expensive (42¢ for shirts), so I wander the streets making up a sort of usage street-map of the dry cleaning places to take my drapes, and hardware and drug and TV and deli shops, and get back about 1:30 in time for lunch. John goes to the supermarket and returns with more picture wire, and I try ineffectually to hold the bookcase together, finishing only after we get back at night with a simple single strand across the outside middle. Try phoning Steve Warren, but we always miss, I shower, and suddenly it's 4 pm and we're into the car to Adelphi. Traffic is stop-start until about the middle, and John decides we have enough time to get the oil changed, so we wait about half an hour while I read, and leave with it still undone. Tearing up the streets has downed the "Adelphi" sign, so we backtrack and get to classroom 110 before Herb Hoviss, which the class says is typical. Not so great class (see next page), but the smorgasbord afterward (exclusive of the hand-held meditation following) was fine fun, and we get back at 10, when John starts proofreading, I finish "Children Is All," and we're to bed at 11:35.
DIARY 3218
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10. Up again after John and into the bedroom to type seven pages to keep up to date after the long weekend away and BEFORE the long weekend away. John goes out for unemployment and brings back the mail, and I send a bill to Roger, write Elaine about River 27, Enzo about DC, Joe with $5 for the rum, and a job application requires 5-8 years experience. Breakfast with fresh peach between times, lunch about 1:30, and then I'm over to start on the kitchen floor again when John rings at 2:30 to kneel before me presenting my messenger-sent galleys of "Othello," which I can't resist looking at, remove paint from my fingers with turpentine, and start into at 3 pm. Run into lots of questions and nerve-making problems, feeling my stomach start to burn uncomfortably, but a call to Susan clears up many of the odd things---like inking causing most of the printing defects, rather than broken type. Work productively (fantastic!) until 5:15, when I shower and shave for Mattachine, and get there at 5:50 to find Joe waiting outside for me anyway (see next page). Out fairly promptly at 9:40 and home by 10, and John said the corn will be for tomorrow lunch, so I just have hamburger and read Life, then wash dishes and to bed at 10:55. John had smoked before seeing "Frenzy" which he said was a bore, but he smokes again when I do, and we start listlessly touching each other, so listlessly that he has to open his eyes and look at me before I'm sure he's not fallen asleep. The touches gradually increase in intensity and closeness, until I'm finally hard enough for him to get the Baby Magic. That's very effective: it seems nothing will make me go down at this stage, so he gets poppers for himself while I finger my slippery cock, admiring its hardness and its sexy vein-definition. He puts on a cock ring of chains, so I start treating him more roughly, and when he literally starts tugging downward on his crotch, I do the same, and he groans and stiffens, and I increase pressures until he thrusts with a grimace into orgasm, but scoots away from my hand on the fourth stoke: he's just TOO sensitive. I arch and tense, feeling marvelous, and shoot good gobs while he pauses, and I go into perpetual orgasm, having no diminution of feeling while he leaves, I play with myself under the towel, still spasming, and reluctantly, when he returns after washing, I stop and fall asleep.
DIARY 3221
FRIDAY, AUGUST 11. Lay lazily after John gets up, then out of bed about 9 to type 3 pages and spend two hours proofreading, finding lots of errors, then stop at 11 for breakfast, and continue until 1, when we have lunch, and then it's packing for the weekend, John determined to leave at 2, but we're out a bit late, at 2:15, and northward toward the Whitestone Bridge until we decide that the Taconic is the best way northward to Great Barrington, and drive around through Brooklyn before getting into the right lanes, and for a change there isn't much traffic, and the trip up is quite smooth. The day is so gloriously clear, with puffy clouds looking like tropical rain-laden sponges of whiteness shading to gray underneath, that when John suggests we look into the Mattachine notes, I put him off, saying that we should look at the scenery, and then I drive for a good two hours after he's driven for two hours, trying for the same motel we stayed in before, but the price has increased to $26! We try a few more places, but they're either full or too expensive, and finally in the city of Lenox we find a tourist house which charges "only" $18 for the two of us. John changes while I wait in the car, and then we zip back to Hassan's for dinner, and they're eating, seeming not to want to be disturbed by us, and they don't have the chicken dish that John wants because they don't have any apricot paste, and John grumbles that if Hassan had answered his letter, he could have brought up POUNDS of apricot paste. The salad is rather skimpy, John getting the only piece of coconut and only grape leaf; the juice isn't quite so tasty, but my separate dishes of spicy beef, bulgur, and particularly the banana-fried eggplant, are absolutely top notch, and John's curry chicken is good, too. We have some of the fried bananas and chickpea sauce when two rednecks from the neighborhood drive up in the Toyota truck and order bananas to take out, since they've just eaten their Friday fish dinner out. We sweat out the timing, and leave at 7:45, promising to come back for dessert. Up to the Lenox Music Festival through the dusk for "Dr. Selavy" (see next page), and back at 10 for a good cake and strong coffee, back to the room for smoke and fairly spirited sex again, and we both drift off to very contented sleep.
DIARY 3223
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12. Wake about 8:30, pack, and out on the road, stopping in Pittsfield about 10 to get the oil changed, finally, with a handsome collegiate blond attendant, then across to a greasy spoon for a steak and eggs breakfast with two simply stunning boy-waiters to watch during the feasting, and then fill up with gas and through small roads in western Massachusetts, getting lost for a large space of time, then going in the wrong direction on highway 9 before I realize my error, and across to New Hampshire. Decide not to stop for lunch, so we buzz up the lovely highway along the border to its end at White River Junction, and then cross-country on terrible roads along Squam Lake until we finally get down to Center Sandwich and find the inn, which turns out to be $7.50 per PERSON, and they don't have a reservation for us, but the wedding party's leaving and we have a room and can use the common john as much as we want. So we shower and shave and shit and fix ourselves up between 4 and 5, then drive down to Center Harbor, where John buys some peanuts and beer, which we consume while sitting watching the tiny waves lap the sandy shores of Lake Winnipesauke, and then up to Belknap College buildings to meet them at 5:15, only to be told that their regular seatings of 55 have been exceeded to 81, and there's no more food for guests. The dining hall is a din of children, and we're just as happy to accept directions to the Country Fare Restaurant, where we're early, but the place fills up by 6 pm, kids, families of 10, tanned floozies in low-cut dresses that everyone stares at with an Agnew-like father and a drunken mother. The duck is great, most of it, and there's adequate butter for the baked potato. Drive down to the liquor store to find it closed, and then to the concert, almost full, and we're snuck (sneaked?) in the back door free. The piano solo is awful, but the flutist is great in the Mozart, and the Stokes Ives-like piece at the end for orchestra, chorus, rapidly-working Ken Harms on drums and a magnificent gong, hand-clapping and white and wind noises, and finally a marching band grinning at the ludicrosity of it all. To the Country Store, though I'm dead tired, for peanuts and beer and the resident Yid, telling us about the 4 junkies in town, until 1, and a hair-raising drive back along the black road to Center Sandwich and a soft bed.
DIARY 3224
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13. Wake at 7 and laze to 8, when we're downstairs to breakfast with Ben and Lucy, with a finger-clutching zany Ms. Coolidge, related to the president in fact and fancy (or lack of fancy) (great blueberry muffins). Then drive in their car into the White Mountains to climb Mt. Welch, they happy we have hiking boots and are in shape. Sit watching sun come in and out of clouds, spot many colorful mushrooms, pass families with complaining kids asking if there's any toilet paper, and then we're at the top, watching shadows dapple the valleys above the cut of the highway in the greenness, brushing away the black flies, eating an orange, airing out socks. Then down, past a cute couple of shirtless guys, when John finds a lovely orange and yellow mushroom that he plants atop an adjoining car's aerial, later finding out that only a bit is the lethalest poison. Drive down an old dirt road, sometimes hitting bottom and cuddling close to the edge while passing, and get to the falls by the back way, laughing at the kids in a train sliding down into a pool, and then to the shores of Squam Lake, where I change into my suit, then decide the water's not TOO cold, and get in, finally, and join them in vainly trying to lift my ass enough to effect a smooth entrance into the water by swinging off a rock on a rope. The three guys swim out to some underwater rocks, where they can stand on tiptoes with their shoulders barely out of the water, coming back exhausted, and I chat with Lucy, then we lay in the sun for a bit, then back to change and get to the cafeteria at 5:15 to still be about the 50th ones through, and the kids are awful, but the turkey is OK, and a glop-covered sundae afterwards is just about the best of the lot. Out onto the porch to chat with various people and make jokes with the black wiry dog which will do anything to get anyone to throw a stick for him to chase. (No, that's TOMORROW) (see NEXT page for TODAY). Then drive in a line of cars over the hill into a brilliantly purple sunset to a high-school gymnasium for the Sunday Recital, pretty awful with fairly amateurish performers (even in Stravinsky's Octet) and a sleepy-making evening, and everyone goes their own way: ours is back to sleep immediately.
DIARY 3225
MONDAY, AUGUST 14. Breakfast with French toast this time, filling up on regular toast and four cups of coffee to make it stretch through the day, and then at 9:45 we walk across to the gift shop, highly overpriced and very Bloomingdaley in quality and atmosphere, then to the Ayotte's gallery for nicer stuff and a BIT more reasonable prices. Still raining, so we decide to drive around anyway, going up on the highway to the White Mountains, looking at the rain-misted horizons, stopping for lunch in a grim dark bar for Texasburgers and a roll of Rolos, then drive through the Cancamagus Highway, stopping to look at a stream, and more mushrooms, then driving to the parking lot for some falls, which we look at, enjoying the leisure of the afternoon, then to the end of the highway, a detour for the Madison Boulder, the world's largest erratic boulder which "scientists believe to be 84 feel long," that gives John a laugh. Continue the drive down around Lake Winnipesauke (this is EARLIER) seeing many small communities with nothing in them to do, and finally get back about 4 to the Inn to change and sit out on the lawn waiting for the Harmses to come for dinner (this was actually yesterday, but today is on yesterday's page). They arrive with their bottle of gin and a lime, and I cut the fruit with a pocket knife and we chat and pass around the bottle, leaving it on the porch, which they pick up, but the next morning we find a lime-rind-filled glass still on the sill next to the table where we put it the previous evening. Into the dining room and chew our way through some tiny ham croquettes, and most other portions are too small, but we manage to fill up with all the little things. Still sort of fatigued from the day, and though I'd made up a pipe ready to smoke (which John said shouldn't be done on the lawn, since these dour New Englanders had nothing better to do than watch out through their white-curtained, white-housed windows with green shutters at what the neighbors were doing), and was prepared to smoke this evening, when I got back from the shower at 9, John was already in bed, and I didn't even feel like reading, so the lights went out and I had no trouble at all getting to sleep.
DIARY 3226
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15. Up about 8 to pack, after having sex pleasantly, and get down to breakfast at 8:30, eggs and toast again with the two pieces of bacon. Pay the bill of $49 presented like a breakfast chit, then lug all out to the car for the hour and a half drive across to the highway. Down and down and down, reading through the notes for Mattachine, and I have to keep my temper in check because he refused to believe any of my experiences in previous talks, and I know I have to resign myself to his making all HIS mistakes, although I may have made them already. He stops for gas and buys some hamburger meat and donuts for cooking, and we're down to Hartford at about 2 when we decide to try for a state park. Down route 8 and there's no entry to the park: I tell him to turn back, but he doesn't, again angering me as he'd done when he tried to recoup a wrong turn by saying "I KNOW what I'm doing," and then being wrong. We go further south, and I "strongly suggest" we turn west for another park, but he doesn't, and then I say he should turn off AGAIN for that park, but he misunderstands my caution that we want the route the OTHER way as saying we should wait for another exit, but of course there isn't any. I'm stewing inside, but he suggests we take the Merritt Parkway, where I'm sure there's no place to stop. There isn't. I explode in anger, then feel guilty, and finally he's off at an exit, asking for a place to eat, and kids suggest the Sizzler, where we have fish and a stakebob at 3:30, and then we're back on the highway to talk about what made me explode. I'm driving, and drive all the way home, getting lost AGAIN on the road because we neither of us know to head for the Grand Central Parkway to get the LIE to get home. Home about 5, unpack, and I put in about an hour's work proofreading before dinner, and then John announces he's going to Man's Country, so I proofread until he leaves, take my still-packed pipe over to the next apartment with the porno book and come deliciously, then turn on TV at 9:30, watch assorted shorts on 13, a half hour of Jack MacGowran in an awful deserty Beckett reading, an hour of James Cunningham's "Lorene's Dream" in clothing until 11:30, then Bette Davis with Dick Cavett (poor) to 1.
DIARY 3227
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16. I cuddle with him, not really wanting him to come, but just get carried away and he DOES come, and I proofread for an hour until breakfast at 9:15, call Raju, who's not there, and George Reid makes an appointment with me at 3 at SIAC, so I work to 12:30, eat lunch, shower and shave, and get out at 2:30 to get there at 2:55, then sit until 3:15 reading, when I remind the secretary, who's almost in tears for having forgotten me, and I talk to Leo Smith until 4:15, finding out that it's the combined data processing departments of NYSE and AMEX, and they want someone to work with their standards manuals, though there's a strict personal check, bonding, Fedelifacts, which I say I don't like, and then I'm over to talk to Oswald Ziegler, who's fat and Marty-like in describing the empire he hopes the company will become. I seem to do well with the interview until I get to the question of afternoons off if "I feel like it," and he has to be assured that I mean it to be only once a month, not weekly. We talk and talk until 5:45, when I subway up to 42nd Street to find the NY Times office closed at 6, then continue up to Avi's, where he's changed the time to 7, and I'm there at 6:35. Chat about his shirt from Fire Island, call John but he's on his way, drink wine, and of the original seven guests, there are only 5: John and me, Bill Berkowitz, silent as ever, Avi and Bill's lover, Jimmy, who's cute though guarded and somewhat shifty-looking, from the Philippines. John talks with him as if he WEREN'T from the Philippines, the dinner of Morton frozen chicken and John's semi-burnt almond-butter cookies (fabulous) is passable, and we talk about the trip, my job interview, and then we're smoking (Bill refusing) and out for a walk to the 79th Street boat basin, John acting kiddish, and then back home about 10, getting my briefcase from Avi's apartment, and home about 11, hot from the subway, spaced out from the wine and the smoke. Nothing's been done with the apartment for a long time, I feel the pressure of getting the proofreading done, and I haven't even STARTED on the talk for Teleprompter TV on Friday, and there's just so much to DO that I don't feel that I have enough time for even doing this DIARY.
DIARY 3228
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17. Wake feeling somewhat better, cuddle for a few moments, then John's up quickly and I follow him to put the bed away. Right back to proofreading, appalled by the number of mistakes and the number of flags I'm putting on the side, more and more now that I'm into the side commentaries. Break for breakfast and a call from Susan saying she has the rest of the galleys in for "Othello" and she'd be pleased if I DID come along with the galleys for the first two acts so she can check how I'm doing, and I can tend my bill for payment. Work from 10 to 1 and break for lunch, then through to four, with John gone up to the LaRue's to be with them and the visiting Warners. He returns at 12:45 talking about the five bottles of wine the five of them had through the evening, despite the fact that Jan's wife Helen didn't think much about drinking before a certain hour. The roast beef was VERY rare because, though she put it into the oven and set the timer, she didn't turn the oven ON, and Tom's attempt at a fluffy dessert collapsed abysmally. I shower and shave at 4, getting off on the subway at 4:30 to go up and buy last Sunday's Times JUST as the office is closing at 5:15, thankfully, and down to the Mattachine office to find no one there, so I look over the TV section, seeing there's something I want to see at 10 tonight, so I resolve to leave RIGHT on time, and I really didn't miss anything, and I start on the want ads while I listen to the taped messages. The night is rather busy, but quiet at the same time (see next page). Leave precisely at 9:30, getting home a few minutes before 10. The program about preventing natural disasters is only a half hour long, and my book verifies that I HAVE seen "Encore," so at 10:30 I'm over to re-heat the hamburger that I froze last Thursday, toast an English, warm up a bowl of soup, and finish the yogurt I brought back from New Hampshire, and then wait for John by proofreading from 11:15 to 12:45, feeling just about ready for sleep when John comes back. We actually get to bed about 1:15 after a lot of fussing, saying this will be the last night on the bed in the living room, since the shades have come in AGAIN, and John will put them up.
DIARY 32230
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18. Out of bed at 8, down immediately to finish the proofreading by 10:30, call Susan to make an appointment for 2, and then get out the Mattachine Times from the recent past, and my old letter to Sydney, and start to put together the talk for tonight's TV taping session. Have lunch and shower and shave and finish the first draft of the notes by 1:30, but the subway is very slow and there's a long wait for the trains, and I don't get to Harcourt Brace before 2:25. Susan's petite and large-eyed, and she looks at first with dismay at all my flags, then agrees that most of them seem necessary, though she reads me the "do only YOUR job, not the job of people working before you" act. She boggles at the 24-hour quote, says she has to talk with Judy, who comes in looking like a short-haired Mimsy Farmer, much younger than I'd thought, looking even younger in wrinkled blue jeans. She says I did a great job, and even the designer says it was good that I lined up the misplaced glosses, though I shouldn't have put PE, and I should always put a dot in a circle for a period. Some other items, and Susan ended up saying that she'd recommend me for ANY proofreading job, even would recommend that I be put into copyediting, since then I'd be working with the author and the manuscript, which I'd like better, and even suggested they'd love having another guy working for them, but the starting salary was only $125 per week. I felt very good, and even the designer seemed pleased with everything I did. Out at 4:30 with the new galleys under my arm, and home quickly to retype my subway-editing of the speech, wash a bit, and subway up to 60 W. 125th Street late at 6:35, not 6:15, but we're onto tape at 6:40-7:10, I'm rather dull, Donn Teal better, and Angelo D'Arcangelo is really Joe Bush (rather cute) from GAA. Subway home, finishing "Cabot Wright Begins" on the subway finally, and at 9 we're getting ready to eat dinner when Arthur M. calls, says he's been out of town for seven weeks in Europe, and would like to see the new apartment. Fine! We eat and I read the Village Voice while waiting for him (actually the New York Magazine, VV was tomorrow morning), and he comes in at 11 pm (see next page). Bed at 12:30.
DIARY 3232
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19. Up about 8, vaguely tired, and settle down with the New York Times from last Sunday until my neck gets sore reading it from the side, and finish the ENTIRE first galley of the Third Act of Othello in exactly one hour, which means that the whole thing is going about twice as fast. That's from 10 to 11, and I'm satisfied about my speed on that, so I switch to the diary, exactly one week behind, and type 11 pages in the slow two hours from 11 to 1. Then have lunch and get over to work on the new apartment for the first time in ages, taking time to watch "White Woman" with Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton as a Don Goodwin-mustached Prin, "King of the River" and some nicely-muscled natives, including Jimmy Dime, severely cut to fit into the 2-3 pm time slot. Then to the scrubbing of the kitchen floor, getting the insides of the rubber gloves all wet, but the place looks great when it's finished. Continue using turpentine to get the white swatch of paint off the front door and try to clean the floors, but they're not going to be so easy. Vacuum the rugs, making the whole place look more lived in, and then get to work getting all the junk out of the middle of the floor in the storage room, using the now-empty bookshelves to pile things on, but it's 7:10, just when I'm really into it, that I have to get back to the apartment in front to shower and shave before the bell rings at 7:25, right when I'm top-shaved and bottom unshaven, and I buzz in Len "Eee-BRAY-oh" and his long-haired hair-cutter friend Wayne. John has daiquiris fixed, they've brought Gallo Champagne, and John's white wine is chilled and nice. Talk for a long time, show them the apartment, with the silk swatch and the jewel-kaleidoscope, which they like, and then back for the pear and caramel sauce as a dessert-like appetizer, the bouillabaisse filled with all sorts of things that Len's never eaten: scallops, lobster, shrimp, mussels, red snapper, water chestnuts, and flavorful tomatoes and onions. The rice pudding with meringue is the only thing Len praises John for, and we sit around for hours talking about paranoia, the future of the US, the gay movement, getting jobs, and grass and acid, and they leave at 12:45, when we all start yawning and no one's had the courage to ask for grass.
DIARY 3233
SUNDAY, AUGUST 20. Work the puzzles to LAST Sunday's Times in short order, and go through more of the paper before I'm hungry for breakfast at 10:30, so I'm out for milk and the paper, get back for breakfast, keep going through the Times until I just have the want ads to check through, then finally finish off those, circling two ads for scientific programming (except that they ask for four years RECENT experience with guidance computations) and one for programming from Boland and Boyce, but they're in New Jersey, so I really haven't missed anything. The double-crostic in THIS Sunday's Times comes easily, but the crossword is more difficult, and we leave it at 2:30 to get out to try bicycling around Wall Street. Over the bridge, and I tell John that I may drive too fast and walk too fast, but HE bicycles too fast, and we pedal around the busy-with-tourists downtown area, looking at the pier that's crumbling into the East River, find 55 Water Street, lark around the Cocoa Exchange building that's designed for fun and pleasure, that blinks at us across the river, look through the handicrafts sale at the South Street restoration, and then back across the bridge to stop in the middle to look at more of the sexy people on the walkways, down at the clear river, and then back to the apartment at 5, where I now start on THIS Sunday's Times, getting through most of it but the ads and the articles in the magazine by the time we have dinner, and then we drive into town again to the Elgin for "Metropolis" which breaks up the audience with its anachronisms, but the use of people as masses and the sumptuous sets are still striking, and "M," which is far better than I remember, and I'd forgotten completely the fact that the CROOKS leagued together to tear apart the warehouse in which Peter Lorre was hidden, and THEY tried him, bringing up all kinds of questions about punishment for a crime someone felt COMPELLED to do (which I think is a jerky reason), and also forgot that the ending was left up in the air, with a tantalizing blurt of voiceover just as the film ended with the police breaking into the factory basement where the criminally-tried criminal-trial was being held. Back across the river for the fourth time and to bed, tired, just before midnight.
DIARY 3234
MONDAY, AUGUST 21. Wake about 8 and read through all the rest of the Times except for the want ads, and then have breakfast with the last of the seven for $1 juicy peaches from the street vendor, and then settle into a solid day with proofreading Othello, working from 9:50 through to lunch at 1:25, and then from 2-5:25, finishing all the text, and getting a good distance into the left-hand commentary, and I try to call Susan to check about more work but she's out of the office today. There are lots fewer flags to be put, and the speed is even BETTER than twice the speed of previous efforts, and I'm getting the impression that I'll soon be able to bolster my number of hours, so that my effective pay scale will be a bit more livable than the $3.50 per hour that they're paying me now. Have a lengthy discussion during lunch about how John, irrationally he admits, feels "obliged" to have sex with me in the morning, since he doesn't think that masturbation's such fun, and he knows that I don't get as much as he does on the outside, but he tells me that this feeling of "obligation" turns him off completely, so I assure him that it IS all a product of his mind, as he admits, that I am doing nothing to lay this obligation on him, that I'm perfectly capable of masturbating when I feel the pressures building (on Wednesday evening he smoked my "supergrass" and asked where most of it went, and he seemed very surprised when I told him that I smoked [and certainly masturbated, was the thought that visibly went through his mind] when he went to "Man's Country" when we returned from New Hampshire), and that WHEN I feel like outside sex, I get it, but I PERSONALLY subscribe to the theory that when you're HAVING sex, it's almost a matter of genital friction that the desire for sex builds up, but when sex ISN'T the object, the body quiets down and DEMANDS IT MUCH LESS. After typing, I phone for the Thalia schedule, and find that there's no way I can convince John to (1) sit again through the 45-minute "Simon of the Desert," (2) leave and come back, (3) nap and see the last showing of "La Terra Trema," so I go off by myself while he goes to Man's Country again. LTT is overrated, too long, badly acted, and very slow and socialistic, and I get back and smoke AGAIN and masturbate in John's apartment, admittedly rather unsatisfactorily, and bumble through the bedroom to bed at 1:35 am!
DIARY 3235
TUESDAY, AUGUST 22. Sleep through till John gets up at 8:45, and I have breakfast and get set for the day at Jones Beach. Leave at 9:20 and get there at 10:15, over fairly fast-moving highways, but lot 9 is still closed from the storm and lot 6 is filling fast. Walk over the beach to lay in the middle of the sands, with a short stocky guy with "Chemical Principles" in his arms the best of the lot, but other slender sexy ones lay around after a bit. Read parts of "Jeremy's Version" while turning slowly in the cool, clear sunlight, and take off to see what the weeds offer, but no one's there, and soon the beach begins to be invaded with families of 9 kids, and other families with kids with Styrofoam surfboards. I figure later they must come from boats they park on the bay near the road and walk through at this narrow point. It wrecks cruising, however. I'm depressed with the day, though the sun's cool enough so that I'm not uncomfortable, and I actually go into the water to tire myself out by swimming before lunch. Then a guy sitting on a dune seems available, and I walk back into the reeds, turn around, and there he is, willing to brush his hardening cock and well-oiled tanned body against me, and I take his small cock in my mouth and massage his tight balls and nice chest, and we play for a nice long time before he comes, and even though interlopers chance past, no one bothers us, and he comes satisfactorily and I get the change to go back to JOHN grinning with success, saying I'd just had hors d'oeuvres. Eat the tuna and back for dessert, but no one's being had, so back to the blanket, John goes back and forth from blanket to water to weeds, I try more at the end, but we leave at 3:25, get back on crowded roads by 4:55, but when I try calling Susan she's either on the phone or just left. Shower and subway immediately to the St. Marks. Having a Blimpie biggie, fairly decent for 95¢ and tasty with lettuce and pepper and too much salt, then get into the 5 hours and 35 minutes of a musically-not-so-hot but theatrically viable "Concert for Bangladesh" with a still-handsome George Harrison and an appealingly epicene Leon Russell, a failed but still interesting Tony Richardson-Mick Jagger effort "Ned Kelly" effectively shot in Australia, and a gripping "Panic in Needle Park" with Al Pacino. BMT subway home by 1, feeling tender and pink, as I slide into bed next to John (who'd eaten at Atlantic House with Cumins).
DIARY 3236
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23. John makes vague overtures toward sex, but he's not really hard and I'M now saddled with his thoughts of "obligation" and decide vaguely that if HE feels obligated, he's not going to make ME feel obligated, so I kiss him and slide from bed, again getting back to the Times and the New York Magazine and the mess that I'd put on my desk to clean up the living room for the Cumins last night. Finally finish the ads, calling Boland and Boyce to find that they DO have jobs in New York, and glance through Life and get rid of lots of stuff from my desk, and get back to the last bits of proofreading at noon, stopping for an early lunch at 1, appreciated because I didn't even bother to stop for breakfast this morning. Then work solidly through from 2 to 6:35 (which I put down as 7), the apartment heating up under the afternoon sun, and I'm feeling sticky and slippery on my seat, but the Othello is finally finished in a total of 14 hours, and John and I agree that I could charge them for 17 or 18 hours, still twice as good for the 19 galleys as the 24 was for the original, admittedly worse (and first), 13. He finishes up his pre-mixed daiquiris on me, I relax with VV for a bit, then get into the shower while he finishes dinner, and get out to a tasty-meat, lousy-squash (over-cooked, I say, and to my surprise he DOESN'T) and zucchini mixed up meal, and Arno calls and I call him back (having left word on his message service in the afternoon), and he's broken up with his friend and looking for a co-op near Fashion Institute after being a month with Bobby in California. Wash dishes quickly (forgetting some things) and across the hall for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" which is pretty good, though predictable except for the Claude Rains "blabbing" about all the corruption at the end, and John's smoked and is feeling good, and I get popcorn for the last half hour of the film, but then we turn on the Republican Convention to see the tag-end of Agnew's acceptance speech and Nixon's over-long, over-propagandistic, straight from the pages of "Our Gang" pack of half truths and slick double statements, and when we turn it off at 11:30, there's nothing to do but go to bed, putting in earplugs to shut out 1) the woman tromping upstairs, even on carpets, in bare feet, b) the woman talking down in her garden below, and c) the cicadas in the trees. To sleep with some trouble.
DIARY 3239
THURSDAY, AUGUST 24. This morning John's overtures to sex are accepted, we're both hard quickly, and then he reaches down for the vibrator I'd put under the bed some days ago, and I come soft, and then work on him only with my come, and he's quite ready enough so I can play around while he strains toward orgasm, and comes pleasantly. I'm next door, determined to finish up everything I have to do today, so I start by putting all items left on list A onto list B, start a new list C, and then put OLD list D onto list B, so I now have something to do at my DESK, and things to do in the NEW APARTMENT. That feels good. Then catch up on the diary by doing seven pages, get a resume off to Boland and Boyce, send a telephone bill to Roger, and write my personal description for Beth El. Type up the Mattachine speech notes for the trip for John, and then put all the "Othello" into an envelope for the messenger to pick up at noon. So all that's left is the typing for the Mattachine Times, and proofread most of the stuff and find mistakes, then mess up retyping my Dance article and have to retype it, and after lunch I get to the other stuff, writing an article about the speeches given in 1957-65, and start on the "Generosity Robbed" article, but they're not home, and I don't have enough background material, so I have to wait for this evening. It's getting hotter and hotter in the room, and the black guy across the way continues to strike up a conversation with everyone who passes by, including an iron-lunged child down the street (or maybe on the next block), and the trucks groan and grind as they collect garbage, and anytime I go to the other apartment, the heavy-footed woman is invariably clunking around. John's reorganizing the kitchen cabinets into a washroom, saying that he's taken up all the room ALREADY, and doesn't think shelf paper is necessary. I finish just about five, shower and shave, and get to Mattachine just before 6 (see next page). Out at 10, still reading "Jeremy's Version" and home at 10:30 to find John at Man's Country, so I eat, then the phone rings and it's Rita, coming either Sunday or the following week, then long agonizing talk with Mom (see following page), and wash the dishes by midnight, telling John what happened, and then to bed.
DIARY 3242
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25. Up and out of bed at 8, and I again leave the bed-making to John, though it turns out later that he doesn't like the idea of that. I type three pages to keep the diary up to date, then get across to the new apartment with my list of things to do, and take the paint off the front door, arrange the clothes in the closet, move the junk out of the bedroom and connect my remote speaker, and move the card table and chairs over to the big closet, and am just taking the red paint off the bathroom fixtures and cleaning off the shelves when the phone rings, and Steve Warren has "misplaced" my resume, and I should come in to see Paul Hutchins, between 1 and 1:30. John last night said "there's no food" when I had things to eat, and this lunch he said "there's nothing for lunch, do you want to go to the store?" and I say no, get back to finish the bathroom, shower and shave, and am making lunch when he gets back from the store, saying that he didn't have enough salad makings for the salads. I say that I think it's an indication of something else, but he says only that he's tired, and will be taking a nap this afternoon. I get off at 1 on the nicely air-conditioned BMT, but everything's slow, including the elevators, from a power lessening, and I get in at 1:40, and Paul Hutchins is a tall, good-looking, casually dressed fellow who says I can go to SIAC, but I say I've already been. Down to find it raining, so I wait a bit, reading, and then subway home by 3, to get back over for more cleaning up of the storage room until 5:30, when we drive into town to eat at Emke's, a bright red dining room with gypsy violins at the end, and the breast of veal is a crushingly over-adequate portion, so that I feel like nodding through the performance, quite good, of the Gale Ormiston Company in connection with the Fairmount Arts Center, with Deborah and sister dancing, mother Cumin the director, and Father Cumin apologizing to John for telling him 8:30 when the start was at 8. Very tired, and back at 10:20 for John to start working on something, so I shower (third time today) and read toward the end of "Jeremy's Version," astoundingly good, and we're into bed at 11:45.
DIARY 3243
SATURDAY, AUGUST 26. Up at 7:30, and I get vibrator for John, and he lets me play and play, but doesn't want to do anything for me, so I finish off myself with the vibrator afterwards. Exercise for the second time, even the first level causing me trouble because of my out-of-shapeness, and finish reading "Jeremy's Version" before breakfast. Type 1, then over to watch the opening of the 20th Olympic Games live by satellite from Munich, until 12:30, and there are some good scenes, and I'm surprised to find tears running down my cheeks more than once, without even a conscious effort. Then shower and try to scrub off the water-scale from the shower curtain, but it doesn't come off very well, have lunch, and then to the typewriter to clear up the junk in my drawer, sending off another check, realizing that I'll have to cash in more stocks to pay the September rent unless I get some cash QUICK, and writing essentially change-of-address letters to Wendy and Paul, and select the performances we want from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and write to Bill again to catch up with him, and that leaves only Peter Mike Schaffer, so I go over and sort through stamps from South America to give him, sweating copiously in the heat and humidity, though it starts blowing and lightening to herald a storm at 5:30 which cools things down a bit. Shower and shave and over to read the village Voice while waiting for Jeff to arrive at 6, which he finally does at 6:40, and they talk business, we eat good warm almond soup (should try it cold, too), and eggplant with meat and tomatoes, tasty, and ice cream and maple syrup, which I bring out because the TV showing of the complete "Olympia" starts at 8:30, and Jeff, having seen it before, wants to see it again. It's still warm, and I'm sure they're uncomfortable because they don't want me to bring in a chair for either of them, and they yawn and stretch and walk around while I watch contentedly through the two hour and more performance of each half. Then Jeff leaves and I decide I can do the dishes later, so we shower again to get the moisture from the evening off our bodies, and JUST as we start to sleep, someone plays a radio downstairs VERY loudly, and someone ELSE shouts down, "Quieter please," and I plug ears.
DIARY 3244
SUNDAY, AUGUST 27. After we're up, John phones to find that it's supposed to rain again today, so it's again no beach. I have breakfast and we go out on the bicycles, I shirtless, feeling cool in the morning breeze, though fairly skin-taut from the sun by the time we get back at 11. We cycle around Prospect Park, and going up the final hill is MUCH easier this time. Back to turn on Channel 2, and the Dancers of Sierra Leone are being moderated by a fey Faubian Bauers, and then I go out for the Times, and start doing the puzzle and reading it, deciding to watch the chess tournament between reading the papers, and it's fairly interesting to watch, sponsored by the Marshall Chess Club and fairly sparkly analysis, and finally Bobby Fisher and Boris Spassky call it a draw, and score's 11-8, and Bobby only needs to get to 12½ to be the new world's champ. This goes on until after 5, and I tune in on the Olympics until 6, getting tired of watching so much TV. After dinner of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic (which I suspect John made for my sister, but we didn't talk about it), he said he wanted to see "Fat City," and I said I really had to wait for Rita, in case she came in. He leaves at 8:30 for the Eagle (after doing a mailing for DTW) and I watch TV from 8-9 for a boring Olympic coverage, then jerk off just for the fun of it, and start watching a terrible Italian series on DaVinci when Rita rings my buzzer at 10. She's up tired and hot, and we sit in the front with the fan on, but still it's hot through ice water and orange juice. She talks about Mom "knowing" about John and me since we both slept in Rita's waterbed, and being angry with it "anytime she thinks about me." She talks on a long time about her work and coworkers at the hospital, and her fun with steaks in Cleveland, COBOL, and swimming around town, and even about amusement park rides. John still doesn't arrive, and I search out sheets and pillows and make Rita's bed, leaving a note for John that she's sleeping inside, and then across to shower again and settle down to start reading Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan," marveling that it even got PRINTED as Sci-fi in the 50's, and John's in at 12:45, happy and sated.
DIARY 3245
MONDAY, AUGUST 28. John's over to a sleeping Rita, and I start on the first repetition of the second level of exercises, and it's impossible to do the 20 sit-ups without putting my feet under a chair (without stopping at 18). Then shower and over to type two pages and write a letter to Schaffer, and call Mary Garvey to see that she has no proofreading for me at Harcourt's Scientific section. Rita's up at last and we have breakfast of cereal, and we go shopping for groceries and duck for Wednesday's dinner, finally getting a frozen one for the stuffing. John starts cooking it and by 3 we're ready to leave for Coney Island, which I thought would be a good thing to see. But we park for 75¢ at Steeplechase ruins, starting with the Germanic metal coaster whose stop is more breathtaking than even its smooth curves and falls, for 75¢, and then I get popcorn and we wander across to the Wonder Wheel, taking a fun ride, and then through the desolate, closed, unpopulated grounds, with the hawkers wistfully calling after us for throwing, shooting, or reading fortunes. And we're to the Cyclone for John and Rita in the front seat, me behind, almost getting my glasses thrown off when I get tossed against the side of the car, and it's faster than I remember. The neck-twisting ride that Joan liked so much was gone, and we went up onto the boardwalk to price the Aquarium (at $1, too expensive for John), and along it to the pier, where Rita and I saw them catching one large fish, bags full of little iridescent ones, and lots of crabs. I get a walnut sundae and we're back to the car at 4:45, being there just an hour and a half, and I say it's enough for a year, John for 3-4 years. Home and get ready for the ride in to Nirvana at 8, and the meal is great AGAIN with brain curry and lamb kurmah, as before, and shrimp with Bengal sauce something I didn't like, but with added beers. Out at 10 and John's very tired, so we don't walk through Central Park, but drive back, and he keeps on with some cooking while Rita and I talk, and I make the bed up for her, and get in to bed, but he's not in yet, so I read some more in the Vonnegut book, which gets better and better, and we're into bed about 11:45, normal time.
DIARY 3246
TUESDAY, AUGUST 29. Wake just before 8, and John's out of bed, and I go over to wake Rita about 8:10, and when we both finish eating and reading our books and magazines (she's gotten Apollinaire's two novels to read, later saying that they were somewhat of a bore, but she expected that: how much can you DO?), and we're out at 9:55 for Jones Beach. The sky is blue but the air over Manhattan is cruddy, but the roads are fast, so we get there in just 57 minutes, then walking to the gay section, spread out the blanket, and I'm back to see how the bushes are doing (see next page). Rita's trying to get out beyond the breaking waves, which are large and well-formed and fun to carouse in, and I finally get her out, but the water quickly gets almost numbingly cold and we begin to shiver, and it even seems colder than it was before. But the sun's hotter, and we move the blanket down toward the water when the flies really start attacking. John goes off and I say to Rita, "Have you observed what the majority class of people is here?" and she says she's noticed, so I tell her very vaguely that John's back visiting in the bushes, and when he doesn't get back by 12:30, and I'm tired of the water and the sun, I'm back inside, and have lots of action, and get back to find Rita finishing her half of the eggplant leftovers, and I finish eating, getting my feet wet in the water one last time, and about 3:30 John says we should leave. Fantastically, it takes us a SHORTER (55 minutes) amount of time to get BACK than it took us to get there (57 minutes). He's out to the store again, and when I'm showering I remember that there's a Board of Director's meeting before the travel meeting tonight, so I get the slides together, get Rita's decision that she'll stay at home with her hair, and John's Hoffman assignation has fallen through, but he's going out anyway, and I leave at 6:10, getting there at 6:35 (see following page), and leave just before ten, getting home to have hamburger while talking to Rita, then do the dishes, still waiting for John, and then sit in the living room and compare earliest remembrances of childhood and the neighborhood, and at 1 I'm tired, and find John'd gotten in at 11:30 and had gone to bed without looking in on us. Getting weary of late hours.
DIARY 3249
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30. Wake at 8 and cuddle a bit, and know we don't have milk or cereal, and tell John to tell me when Rita gets up, and I get into the storage room to clear out the corner for moving the coffee table into it, and then decide to do the floor first, so get the Spic and Span and a scraper and start on it, going very slowly along the wall, but get the wall done by the time Rita's up and John goes shopping, and then Rita comes over to tell me when it's here (and I don't exercise today for the first time after five solid days), and we have breakfast just before 11, and then I'm back to the floor, and Rita finds that she's leaving at 3 to get a train at 4:10 to Boston. We sit and chat while I do the floor, then she finds the scrapbook and starts looking through that, and I'm almost finished when John storms in, cooking all day for the LaRues tonight, and says that WE have to make lunch, and then he steals the vacuum cleaner to do his apartment. Rita makes the salads, and takes so long that I go over to check on her before we eat lunch at 1:45, and John's out to shop for the last time while we finish at 2:30, and she packs, and I escort her down to the subway entrance, refusing to lug her suitcase all the way to Penn Station, and back to the apartment to watch John cooking, and then back over to finish off the floor exactly to the hall, fix up the place for viewing by the LaRues (and Brandt called John to say that his wife was in an auto accident and they wouldn't be coming). Shower and get ready for them to come at 6, and they're in and we're out to the Promenade with Fuki plum wine and avocado dip for crackers, and we talk and chat till 7:30 watching the sunset, and back for my blendered cucumber soup, cold and chipper, then duck stuffed with (and I'll always remember the LaRues' simultaneous amazed double-take) a DUCK!, which is rich and somewhat tough, then a fabulous green bean salad with chives (which I had everything to do with, fixing the beans and buying the chives in a special trip, which must have been the eighth for the dinner), and then a fabulous (though fallen [or Tom Warner'd]) chocolate soufflé under gobs of whipped cream, then they had to leave at 11, and I'm too pooped to even wash the dishes, so we're right over to bed at 11:30, to get right to sleep.
DIARY 3253
THURSDAY, AUGUST 31. Wake and cuddle and start into a 69 of consummate skill and dexterity, both coming, and then I'm over to type five pages, and work on a long letter of explanation to Mom, which finishes just as John's ready with lunch just after noon. Then in to continue working on the hallway floor, and the paint seems much more difficult to remove, most of the time it's actually easier to remove the old wax, and more often than not there are OTHER layers of paint spots UNDER the wax, so the job seems endless, particularly when I turn on TV and watch the chess game. Earlier I'd gone out with a load of stuff to do: take shirts and pants to the cleaners and launderers, mail letters, and pick up the box of Eisenhower dollars from the mail-window guy who made me sign my name twice even after looking at my driver's license. Then shop in five stores before finding the proper kind of plastic glass for the bathroom in the store nearest home. Scrape and watch TV, and the game goes on and on, until I'm shaving and brushing my teeth and showering during the intermissions, and when brushing my teeth, straining to look at the TV, I pull my shaver off the shelf and it falls into the toilet bowl, succeeding in doing what I'd been trying to do but never succeeding: slipping the INSIDE case out of the container. But even that's pretty well sealed, so when I gingerly turn on the switch, it still works, thankfully having gotten little or no water into the electrical works. Spassky seals his 41st move at 5:45, and I dash out to the subway, just missing one and then just GETTING one, for another incredibly hectic night at Mattachine (see next page). The last thing to happen is that Julian Hodges comes in, and we go to Mona's Royal Roost on Cornelia for dinner of ratatouille and omelets and daiquiris and Grand Marnier and Grant's, and he pays $20 for the whole thing, I see him into a cab, then subway home at 1:30, being so dizzily impressed with the evening that I go into the study and type out the three preceding pages in the alcoholic haze of the evening. Then across to brush my teeth and climb into bed next to John, who gave a snort as if he may have been awake, having gotten to bed only at 1 am from the movie, the Eagle, and the busy trucks.
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