1973 1 of 6
DIARY 3522
MONDAY, JANUARY 1. Up quite late, feeling still tired, and we try to have sex, but I just don't feel up to it, having to jerk myself off furiously very limp, and then we're up. I work on Creative Books work after I do the horrendous dishes almost until noon, and then across to watch "Cobra Woman" which I saw the end of before, while soaking stamps, just to get rid of something simple from the list of things to do. That's pretty good, and I watch snatches of "Red River" until I finish with stamps at 4, and then over to work 3½ hours in all on Crebos, and Shirley and Helen come in at 4:35 to talk to John about our trip, and then I come out at 6 to talk and give a prospective itinerary to Helen for her first trip to Asia, and then we have dinner of chilled madrilène (and this is all after smoking some of the fairly powerful stuff that they brought with them from the West Coast), and then the capon, with ANOTHER dressing that was very good, this one with bananas also, but not QUITE as spectacular as the crunchy wine one of before. Peas and then fudge, and rest of the punch tort, and the rest of the rice pudding finish off the meal, and then John unfolds the bed, and I get definite signals that they'd love sex, particularly when Shirley exclaims about John's target (his ass under his trousers) when he bends over to do something at the other side of the sofa, and then I say I want to hear the music to grow plants by, and we're over to the other side, to smoke another pipe, and John gets out Changes, and then I find an adjustment that's like ANOTHER CHANNEL on the thing, with BRIGHT corduroy colors and flashy patterns that are quite eye-dazzling, without being dizzying, and I put on "Phorion" and "Naked Carmen" and "Days of Future Passed," and all but pass out on the floor enjoying the colors, and finally they say they've had it, so I peel myself to a standing position, and say goodbye to them (they have to wake at 4:30 to get downstairs to a car at 5:30 to leave at 6:30 on their charter back to California), and we undress and get into bed about 11:30 feeling NO pain, and I don't even feel like jerking off, and the weekend has been a triumph, though I ALSO don't feel like staying up to see "Theodora Goes Wild" at 1 am. Sleep instantly, feeling fed, sexed, and thoroughly FETED.
DIARY 3523
TUESDAY, JANUARY 2. [Ten days behind, a seemingly impossible task.] Up about 8, feeling completely hung-over-with-pot from the weekend, and over to find a nice note from Shirley and Helen, and then do all of the dishes, feeling that that's ALL I've been doing for the weekend, though of course it isn't true. Out as quickly as possible, but don't get to Crebos until a tiny bit after 10. Ask questions that I had about the Britt and Boyd and take out MORE Britt and Boyd, two more large sections, after reading a bit of Murrill and Smith until it gets ready. Out just after noon and almost forget my lunch in the fridge, but get to ACC at 12:30 and work through until 5:30, trying to get in some extra hours, taking off my 1/2 hour for lunch, and get home at 6. Have dinner and do the dishes for the thousandth time, and John again wants to go to the $1 night at Man's Country, but I have to finish some typing, and I've gotten into a terrible state about the things on my "TO DO" list. Type six pages to catch up to date and permit myself to tear off the old sheet and the whole calendar from 1972 and put it into the drawer in the storage room, and transfer to the new calendars and datebooks, except that a prominent item on the list is the typing of the stuff from 1972 before I can put it away (and the transcribing of the movie list AFTER I get it all typed up, too). Don't even want to work, just want to do the stuff on the list, but I have to get the money for the trip that John's already laid out, and I don't even have time to look at it from the shelf. John's smoking already when I'm finished typing and over to put in my contacts, and I almost think he'll leave without me, but I smoke and put in the lenses and touch up on my shaving, and we're both over in the cold weather at 8:30 (see next page), and though the crowd's not very good, there's still enough activity to be happy about, and it looks like Tuesday at Man Country for $1 is about to become a stand-by on our weekly schedule. Out at 12:30 after having been called, and get back to find John long in bed. Crawl into bed about 1:15, feeling tired almost to the point of sickness.
DIARY 3526
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3. The woman upstairs must have clumped around, because I was up early and to ACC at 9:30. So frustrated was I that I wrote the following (and I'll continue Wednesday where it finishes): "One resists the impulse to go OUT of one's mind. (1) I checked out 80 (L-7) and 80A (L-10) on the same day (12/13). They can't find 80; in fact, EDI says they never pasted it up. I look at 80A, and it's the "Chain fence for dingos" in Australia, and I think, "I've seen that twice." Look at files and there's 78 and 80A, and an unidentified sheaf of xeroxed sheets between them. 80A is the proper one. Then I look at the Table of Units and see that 80 is for a calculator and ONE calculation, but that 80A is for a calculator and TWO calculations. Look at the unidentified sheaf and it's for calculator, problems I've never seen before, and I mark it "This is 80???" Then Ann Harries says, "Well I have a script for 80," and gets out 8, then gets out 80, and it's the same. At this same INSTANT EDI is on the phone, sending numbers back and forth, and Sally and Ann and Celia and Ron and I are prating back and forth. Then I find I signed out the ANSWER sheet for 80A on 12/3, so that's why I SAW it twice. So then I change heading to "This is 80!!!" and tell everyone I signed out SOMETHING on 12/13, the only question in my mind now is "WHICH was it that I DIDN'T sign for?" Everyone laughs and I leave. (2) I check G16, ordinal numbers, and the 6th is usually spelled 6th, and is NOT translated. Previous green (French and Spanish) proofreaders SAID they should be translated, but Susan had crossed them off. So I decide to translate them, and write 6o and 6ieme for all. Then the comp gal comes back and says they WERE doing them ON-line, and looking back, in fact, I FIND 1st, 5th, and 9th. Look further and find 3d, which is wrong. So we say to set them ALL down on-line. Fine. I check through and find ILLUSTRATION caption that was 5th, untranslated. Change ALL to on-line, then Ann HERRICK comes into the question. "But 5o looks like 50, so IT has to be above: 5o (which will look like a temperature?). Hassle back and forth with Sam and Ann and they decide to DO it that way, coming up with 5o, 5o, and 5o, great!.
DIARY 3529
THURSDAY, JANUARY 4. Up to cuddle and start in on Britt and Boyd at 8:30, working through John's leaving and my saying that, mainly due to Ginny's remark yesterday that her boss gave a friend two tickets to the Chinese Acrobats and my ensuing envy, I'll be going to see if there aren't cancellations at the theater tonight. Have breakfast at 10:20, get back to work at 10:30, then stop at 12:30 to see "Who, What, Where," and just by chance see that the gal who was on with me, and postponed, is on, so I call to see why I'm not on, and they say everyone's away on vacation, and I should call back next week. Lunch and back to work at 1:45, and work through to 3:45 except for some telephone calls, working 5½ hours which I intend to bolster to 8½ hours because I work with such concentration at home and usually take ABOUT 1/3 of the time at work, so that entitles me to a 50% increase in the number of hours I bill. Then sort through things to do, John comes home, I read the Voice and sort things into piles and fill my "do" list right to the bottom, hoping to get everything done this weekend. He asks if I want dinner at 6, so I say OK, and get out at 6:15 to get to the City Center about 6:50, and there's a mob waiting for cancellations, and the guy in front of me, who's number 2 on line, says that he's NEVER lucky, and I say I'm ALWAYS lucky, so this time HE must be lucky. He wants to gab, but I stick my nose into a book. Other guy pushes ahead of me, saying he was there earlier but went to park his car, and I say he's NOT getting in, wondering what the battle will be in case they have only THREE cancellations. Then there's a flurry at the window and they're selling tickets (4) for TOMORROW night, and everyone's waiting for tonight, so I grab them (1). Wait around to see that no one ELSE has gotten cancellations, but that there were some sold from the OTHER window, which makes me very angry, and I tell them "Thank you for NOT understanding me" when I register a complaint for the people who'd been standing on line all the time. Then walk down to RCA for a tacky show except for the Rockettes as stiff-kneed wooden soldiers, with a "domino-fall" climax skillfully done, and "1776" with so little song (though nice humor and good acting) that I can't figure how it was ever so popular. Home, John's in bed, and I jerk off to porno in front of the heater. Bed at 12.
DIARY 3530
FRIDAY, JANUARY 5. Up early again, getting to Cerbos at 9:20, and sign up for 8.5 hours on 1/4, and stay 1.5 hours today until 10:50, finding that I hyphenated a word in the wrong place, and I really SHOULD get a word-break book, though they say I should invest in a dictionary based on Webster's Third International, since that's changed so many of its usages. Sit around talking to people for a bit, then get to ACC at 11:30 and work through till 6:30, with Susan working with me, talking about the restaurant called Giordano's on 39th Street near 9th Avenue which she's going to, and then I get out to walk over toward Broadway, where I have a slice of pizza to stop my stomach from rumbling during the performance, and then by mistake get onto the BMT subway that I could have taken much earlier than 32nd and Broadway. Out at City Center at 7:10, and the theater lobby isn't filling up yet, but all the doors are guarded, and even the entrance to the second balcony is through the center doors, since they obviously fear some kind of student rush on the single man usually posted in that wide stairway. Up and directed out the entrance to get to the side stairs, and downstairs and upstairs I'm told that I have to check my briefcase, because I guess they're afraid of some kind of attack on the troupe, but I nod in agreement and brush past them, ignoring the final shouts from the person in the second balcony, and get to my B46 seat, which can see only about 25% of the stage. The seats fill up quite completely, despite Ginny's prediction that many of the groups won't arrive, and the audience is about 75% Chinese. Kids all over, too, making me disgusted with them. I have to keep popping up the stairs and crouching behind the railing to see the whole stage, but the show is tremendous (see next page). Eager to leave early to see the "Ancient Astronauts" show, but the curtain comes down just before 10, and I don't get home until 10:45, so I don't see much (see following page). John's out at Arthur Sainer's "The Thing Itself" which impresses him very highly, and it's the start of a weekend that strikes us both as revealing the incredible variety and pleasureableness of entertainments available for those who search them out in the hyperthyroid city of New York.
DIARY 3534
SATURDAY, JANUARY 6. Up late and get to work on Britt and Boyd to finish that off so that I can spend the rest of the weekend "playing." Read straight through from 9:10 to 12:30, and then have lunch and read from 12:55 to 2:30, a total of five hours, for which I'll charge 7.5 hours finally, reading the middle section of pages, the last I'll have of the book, from 345-498, but with 49 pages in the middle being pickup and not proofable except for running feet. Then decide to make John happy and look at the Dictionary, so I finish the Bs from 2:30-3:45, and then we go through the remaining questions and he now has the COMPLETE set of As and Bs to answer, and he calls Judy Kipnis, who invites us for dinner a week from tomorrow, when John'll pick up the archives. Then I work on the Cs until 5:30, then remembering that I forgot to watch the end of "Last Days of Pompeii" that I wanted to watch, having not even had the TIME to watch much TV the past few weeks. Then I request the usage of the dining room table for stamps, and get into them with gusto for the first few hours, until we eat dinner at 7, lovely chicken again with butter-browned skin, though sadly the rice with it is on the cold side. I'd read about the "Strange Festival" in the Voice, which talked about the fact that there were a lot of lights and they showed films and played music by the Moody Blues, which made anyone someone good on my side, and John was interested in seeing it, and so we both smoked a bit before leaving, and then drove into town to 181 Christopher and smoked a LOT of grass in the car while people cruised past paying no attention to us at all. Into the place to "pick up the tickets" early, and at 8:30 we were the first (?) ones there, and a MOST unusual evening began (see next page). Getting the Mobius-strip programs from the thick-sweatered thick-muscled Italian-type at the door was the first turn-on, and then we went into what merely looked like a fairly lavishly endowed apartment: gleaming wooden shutters across the front, draped with curtains and Mylar sheets and clusters of tiny lights on strings. There were soft inviting sofas, a large open space before multifaceted light consoles, and in the front a study-nook with sheaves of folders
DIARY 3534
SUNDAY, JANUARY 7. We're up quite late, maybe even 9 am, and I get right back to stamps, since my typewriter's on the floor where I put it to work on John's Dictionary, and I thought I might still get back to it, and so I didn't disturb it, but sadly I missed the chance to type the last 13 pages [and I just went back and find that it's VERY hard to even number these pages sequentially, this page ISN'T 3567, it's 3536, thanks to TWO sets of continuing errors in pagination.] Keep on with stamps, ignoring the Times which I bought last night, and feeling slightly nauseous and sick to my stomach and headachy from too much wine last night, condemning myself for drinking so much and getting so VERY high. Have breakfast in the hopes of settling my stomach, but it doesn't help much, and I even take two teaspoons of Di-Gel in the hopes of not wrecking my day. Have a ball putting in the new mint (unused, technically, since most have no gum) US stamps, and get many of the smaller countries in quickly. But Poland, due to the enormous number of stamps sent me by Peter Schaeffer, is going to be a real chore. Lunch comes about 12:30, and I sit and chat with John, loath to mention my headachy feeling, and then we're off very early to the Dancers of Bali, and again we're disappointed by not being in a small audience, we can't move down, so we sit in our S-row seats in the first balcony through the whole performance (see next page). Home at 4:30, feeling strangely unaffected by the whole thing, and I say as much to John, and he seems to agree. Back to stamps, and then we have dinner and get out to Sergio's concert at 7:15, which again is too early, but I'm beyond arguing with John. Only once we won't be able to find a place to park quickly, and will be late, and he'll never forgive me. Into the Mercer Arts Center and get into the nightclub, then into the next room, where a photo of the Oscar Wilde room tells me that we have further to go, and down a long corridor to the proper place, where everyone's in the process of setting up, and John congratulates Sergio on his program on New Year's Eve, and comforts Kenneth, who's still too sore from his floor-sander accident three weeks ago to dance tonight (see following page). Home to finish stamps at 10, finish the Times, NOT doing the puzzle, and crawl depressedly into bed with John at 12 (there's still so much to DO!).
DIARY 3539
MONDAY, JANUARY 8. Up and start going through my desk drawer to get lots of things out of the way, and finally when John leaves I get the pages of Britt and Boyd together for Crebos and get off to turn them over, and find to my chagrin that there's nothing from the office that needs taking: everything that's on the shelves has readers during the day, and I sadly say that I'll call back later in the week to see if there's anything for me. Leave about 11, having talked to Marge, and get down to Henry's at 11:45 to find him not in yet, so I have the lunch that John packed for me and Henry comes in to have the tuna salad sandwich that Carl's made for him while talking to me about how Henry INSISTS that Carl do everything with him, and how important it is to Carl to have some peace of his OWN for his OWN workings. We're off at 12:15 amid worries by Henry that we're never going to make it on time, only to arrive at 1:40, quite early enough to have coffee and Coke and talk to people before the class starts (see next page). There are no more questions at 3:40, so we're back into the car and drive back to Henry's finding nothing better to talk about then cooking. Back to chat about our coming trip and get an address of a couple from Atlanta who are good friends of theirs, and call John at 6 to say I'm going to be a bit late. In at 6:30 and we eat at 7, and then he's off to something and I take the opportunity to get to my desk drawer: taking out the piles of stuff in SCRAPBOOK, TRAVEL, and LETTERS TO SAVE, sorting through them all, and get across to sort the things out into the TRAVEL folders in the box in my clothes closet, finding lots of stuff to transfer either into the TRAVEL box in the study closet, or into the SCRAPBOOK, and then sort through the letters, putting them all away, and then I'm hung up: there just isn't enough room in the letters file anymore. Figure I can handle that tomorrow, and sort out all the scrapbook stuff all over the floor, dreading the thought of John coming in and demanding to know what's going on, and get everything THERE all sorted out by about 11, by which time it's too late to do any typing, so I'm over to the next apartment to shower, and John's in and we're to bed at 11:30.
DIARY 3541
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9. Up early because the woman's walking again, and over to get right into the income tax reports, since it's too early to start typing away. After about an hour find what I'd earned through the year, got into the sets of forms that I had, found another brochure that I needed, and figured I'd get tax money BACK, and that I didn't really have to submit my return until April 15, unless I wanted my money back SOONER, although I hadn't figured in the substantial sums from my stock sales yet. Felt good about that and even got to sorting out the Mattachine shelf, getting that into three piles, and then figuring most of it could be filed. That gets me to the crowded file cabinet, and I figure the Mattachine stuff has to be transferred to another drawer, so I take out all the accumulated programs to be taken over to the storage room, and that gives me LOTS of room to get out the black sheets and the little square stickers for labels, and I make lots of new labels and leave lots of room for everything, including correspondence, and don't quite get anything productive done with the Mattachine stuff, but at least I know where things are AT, and find that there's a lot less in the line of CORRESPONDENCE that I have to backlog to answer. Feel a lot better about that, cart stuff over to the storage room, where it fits so nicely that I even go through the chest to take out most of the programs, leaving room to add stuff THERE (though sadly I don't have ANY time for typing, and then even start my EXERCISES again at level one, figuring I'll need flexibility for the upcoming "Looking at Dance" classes at DTW, and for the beaching on the Florida trip. Feel great, and get off to ACC at 11:30, working through to 5, when I leave promptly to get to the first class (see next page), and leave there at 7:10 after meeting Alice Dustin, or whatever her last name is, and subway home to have a quick dinner and when John asks if I'm ready for Man's Country tonight, I say yes, so I do the dishes quickly, and get over, where he's already been smoking (even before dinner), and we're out at 8:45, John walking fast in only his coveralls and sweater, the nut, and I'm out at 12:30, he's already asleep, and it's been a hard night (see following page), and have NO trouble falling sound asleep.
DIARY 3544
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10. Do first level 2 exercises. In to ACC at 10, and the day is so much worse than usual that I end up taking a whole raft of notes on little pink slips (see next page). Leave at 5 on the dot to get up to Maharaja India at 5:25, but John's nowhere to be seen before 5:50, being delayed by the subways, and I read the entire menu and even start on "Out of Africa" before he arrives in the empty restaurant. I practically order for him, and we have two different super meals, but the quality of each things is somewhat below the items in comparable Indian restaurants, and it's so disappointing that I give it a rating BELOW any other previously evaluated restaurant in the list. John's tired and decides not to go to the Thalia, which is the reason we ate up there in the first place. I sort of gripe at him, but he goes off at 7 and I dash up to the Thalia to JUST get there five minutes after the scheduled starting time, so that "Plaza Suite" is just ending. Sit in the back row with lots of old men, and a cute kid sits next to me and is content when I rest my arm and leg against his, but he moves two rows in front, and moves again, quite pointedly, when the guy next to him feels him up. How sad. There's an old mumbler in the last row who rattles on to himself in a rumbly monotone, and I speak over, "Will you please be quiet?" and he shuts up, after looking at me with a startled glance that implies he wasn't even conscious of speaking aloud. "Last of the Red-Hot Lovers" is fairly funny, but the continuous string of wisecracks between Alan Arkin and Sally Kellerman in the first third is really TOO much; the grass scene with Paula Prentiss was overdone in a sicky way, and the Renee Taylor character is just to stupid to be believed. "Plaza Suite" (another obvious three-act play format) is heart-breaking with Maureen Stapleton as a wife who finds out her fitness-nut husband is having an affair with his secretary, too silly with Barbara Harris as a flame of a Texas-type Hollywood producer, and just UNBELIEVABLE (particularly with the ending "Cool it!" to make her come out of the bathroom) with Lee Grant as a fairly funny Bronx matronly Mother of the Bride. NOT among Neil Simon's best realizations. Out at 12:30, subway longly home, and into bed next to the snoring John, feeling tired.
DIARY 3549
THURSDAY, JANUARY 11. Up for the second day of exercising at level 2, which feels fairly good: tomorrow starts the harder level 3 again. Into work at 10 without taking lunch, because this is the day we'd planned to go out to lunch, and spend about an hour talking about restaurants in the area. Finally decide on the Weathervane Inn, but get out with Susan and Gary to find that it's closed. Walking to Madison to go uptown to Rinaldo's, which Ginny said was good, but I suggest going to the Dubrovnik, and we're in and check our coats before looking at the menu, and it doesn't look so expensive, but we have appetizers, a bottle of tart rosé for $6.50, and a lot of rather puerile conversation about clothing and restaurants and jobs while the wine goes about making us all happy while the bill mounts up, and I'd had a maximum of $8, but spent $11, and have to borrow $3 from Susan to be able to have $20 to pay the rest of the dance class bill this evening. Out at 12 and back at 2, feeling no pain, and even take the chance of charging only 1 hour for lunch. Out at 5 promptly and walk over to DTW to find no one to take my money, and Alice says that she's starting as a temporary tomorrow at ACC, is it for the same department that said they had no work for her on Wednesday?? I said we'll see. Class is tremendously insightful (see next page), and I get home to cook my hamburger and get over to see Cousteau's film about the Nautilus, and Michaelangelo Antonioni's film about China "Chung Kuo." A very interesting evening of television (see following page), and I'm sorry that John's out somewhere (he went to a dance performance and to the Man's Country Baths tonight and tomorrow night, but I don't remember which was which---I guess one was Jan Wodynski at the Cubiculo, leading him to say "I thought you Poles stuck together?" when I said I didn't care to see her unless she were choreographing for Philobolus) and not watching the boob tube when there's something on that definitely ISN'T for boobs to watch. The editing on "China" wasn't that good that they couldn't have shown essentially the same thing at MMA when I wasted the trip to get there. John's in about 11:30, even before I shower, so we're into bed together.
DIARY 3552
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12. Into ACC at 10:30 and sure enough Alice IS there for $3.50 an hour as a clerical hire through TWO agencies (hers and ACC's), rather than as a $4.50 direct hire through me. Ginny says she didn't "connect" the two things, but I'm not sure I believe her. Susan and Ruth and I get out at noon to go up to the Gotham Book Shop to look at the Edward Gorey exhibit, since I've been reading "Amphigorey" of Susan's with delight for the last two days, and we stay there about an hour and a half looking at all his stuff, other stuff, and everyone buys books of his except me, and we're back to the office and I read the REST of the stuff, and decide that I have to bring in some work, because we're getting down to the bottom. I'd called Nancy Doctor, hoping to take something out by the end of this week, but they say they don't have enough work, and by Monday they even tell Marge Dumond that she's not needed for the rest of the week, since they barely have enough to keep the permanent staff busy. So it looks like the weekend will be free for me to finish up everything I want to do, not to mention doing a bit of research for the trip. Leave at 5:30 to get a bit of extra money, and then home to have a lengthy conversation over dinner and John goes off somewhere, and I do the dishes and settle into typing diary pages, but it goes very slowly, and by the time I finish with 6 pages, I feel that I've done enough. Sort through other things, putting them into order for the weekend, and I get two calls, one from Bob Burdick and one from Mark Williams about the Board meeting on Tuesday, to which I'm supposed to bring everything typed up, and I get all set to get into those by taking all the stuff to work on Monday and doing the EDITING for the articles there. I must do something to keep busy, but I'm not sure what it is, because there isn't that much left to do on my list, and I didn't do much of it. Probably spent time with the Village Voice, again finding nothing of interest in it, and then get over to shower and meet John when he gets back, and we both feel tired for no good reason, so probably get to bed early with a bit of grass to make sleeping nicer. Noise from the neighbors all through here.
DIARY 3553
SATURDAY, JANUARY 13. Up fairly late, probably having sex along here somewhere, though both of us seem to be so wound up in things we have to do that we don't think about it much, nor devote much time to it. I'm over and start working on the diary, doing 9 pages at a VERY slow rate because I'm looking up the location of Sebatu in Bali and not finding it anywhere, going through the von Daniken book of "Chariots of the Gods" to write about the TV special based on it, and digging out all kinds of old programs to be sure I have the right information for the pages of reviews that I write about them. I finish that by about noon, then break for lunch with John, and when he goes to his Saturday class I start typing up the 1972 datebook, which also goes very slowly, except that I decide to capitalize the names of movies, to help me in bringing the movie list of up date. Then I'm over at 5 to watch the TV special about San Francisco---the City that Waits to Die, and it's VASTLY interesting to see the films taken of the PREDICTED earthquakes in Matsushira, Japan, and the landslides that carried away houses that only trembled when the earth did; the effect of the saturated sands of landfills when their cohesion is destroyed by trembling; and the vistas of the enormously sheer, glassy buildings that overwhelm the skyline in San Francisco, and the attempts they're making to predict earthquakes there: if a major quake doesn't happen in five years, we'll be able to predict it! But it's tragic to see the school (one for the blind) right ON the fault line. Over for dinner at 6, then leave at 7 to be VERY early for the Erin Martin and Kei Takei concert at the Clark Center at 50th and 8th (see next page). Enjoy that, and drag John and Marcia away by 9:30 so that we can get home not TOO much after 10 to watch the Marlene Dietrich special, and if she was born in 1904 as "Information Please" says, she's a great-looking 68-year-old. We smoke and marvel at her still hands, the soft-focus camera, the immobility of her dress, the simplicity of the production, and the effectiveness of her singing all the songs. Stagger off to bed at 11 on the dot, hardly even cuddling, and ear plugs STILL in and drift lazily off to sleep.
DIARY 3555
SUNDAY, JANUARY 14. Up and out for the Times, which I didn't get last night because of my rush to see Marlene, watch Kabuki at 11-11:30 and read everything but the Magazine section, which I take to Judy's with me, but John leaves it behind. Finish typing the datebook and type two more diary pages before we have lunch and leave about 1:15, because John has to finish some part of his dictionary article, and we leave on a bright day, hoping to find snow up in Connecticut, but there isn't any at all. The drive's quite a bore, but we get there in an hour and a half, and Jeremy and Judy are outside waiting for us. He plays with the fighting cocks that I gave him that Arnie gave me, then we get into a game of Monopoly that he cheats at when he starts losing, insisting I can't mortgage my property to buy new ones, and then he's interested in the cheese drops she makes which are so good, drinks come out, they're talking away, and then I start making paper airplanes for him and he gets hyper again, so I take refuge in the jigsaw puzzle of the New York Subway System, which he's only JUST started, and I decide to do Manhattan, and that's easy because I know it, and then get the clue to FINISH the thing, it's only necessary to go line by line, and then you'll be left with an easy coastline and a bit of amorphous blue before you're finished in no time. Too easy. He's done the laundry and joked about the drier that doesn't dry, Judy's cooking and talking to herself, and we have goose bouillon, very thick with chestnuts sprinkled into it, and then a Cassoulet Toulousean, with pork and ham and sausages and huge hunks of fatback which I carefully avoid, and its TREMENDOUSLY filling with its density, and her homemade bread is good, and John's mousse for dessert is lightly good. Then we're ready to leave at 7:15, though I haven't done as much as I wanted on the puzzle, and we finally leave about 8, not getting back until 10 because of holdups on the road, and we both get to work on various things in the apartment, he putting the bulk of the archives for his dictionary (the purpose of the trip) under his table-desk, and I figure he's going to stay awake, and start working on the movie list, but he gets into bed IMMEDIATELY at 11:30, so I have no choice but to follow him.
DIARY 3556
MONDAY, JANUARY 15. Up and to ACC early enough (probably at least by 9:45) to sign in at 9:30, and work through until 5 for a 7-hour day, required for the money I need for the trip. Do some editing on Mattachine articles during lulls in work, but there's usually enough to keep busy, particularly sitting in the office with Susan and Ginny and having all other workers passing by seeing what I'm doing---or not doing. At this point I'm counting the full days of work I have left even if I work every day (as seems likely, since Marge says today that not only isn't there work for ME, there isn't even work for HER and she's not to come in for the rest of the week), and there doesn't appear to be any crush of Dictionary work descending on me that I won't be able to handle on weekends and in the evenings. Leave at five and get home to start work on typing the Mattachine articles, which takes a long time: even though the typewriter's fixed, it still takes ages for the white-out to dry after I put it on, and finally I put the movie list on my lap so that I have something to do while it dries. Don't even do the dishes after we eat, since I say I'll do them when I'm tired of typing, except that the drying takes so long that I'm hardly EVER tired of typing. Get everything typed that I should have done ages ago, and then get to work on the Hodges article, determined to cut it down from two possible articles to one, omitting all the junk that's merely gossip, leaving a fairly terse, nonpersonal result. Mary Malone calls about 10, wanting to talk, but I cut her off, telling her to call back on Wednesday, but she doesn't, only wants me to work fulltime at some programming job in COBOL or other, and I say my part-time commitments won't permit me that at present, but if she has any OTHER part-time work, to be sure and keep me in mind. Work through till 12, finally getting some of the Pilobolus article into shape, but the details I don't remember, so I scavenge back and get the program and prepare to work the next morning to finish the stuff. John's over in the next apartment watching TV, so then I'm over to watch with him, smoking to do away with my fears of Rosey Sheik on Wednesday, feeling everything's PILING UP! Too tired to stay up for movie 1-3.
DIARY 3557
TUESDAY, JANUARY 16. Up to wash a huge stack of dishes from the stuff John's been doing all night: cooking on both stoves and in both ovens, using the blender for cucumber soup, baking two angel-food cakes, getting the three bottles of syrups for cake-topping all cruddy with sprayed cake batter from his over-industrious squeezing, and getting everything else together for his party here tomorrow night: dinner for 7 and dessert for 20 for the DTW people who are going to Switzerland and their hostess, whom I meet only briefly. Do the dishes, all of them, and then settle down to typing the rest of the dance article, then exercise after John's left, getting finally into the third level, hoping to stay AT LEAST there until the trip, so that I won't be so saggy. John hasn't even packed a lunch because he's so busy preparing for the party, so I take off for work planning to go to Suehiro for lunch, getting into work at 12 to find the office empty and Susan and Ginny already gone somewhere. In to the file room to ask the freelancers, and Barry says his stomach's upset, and Jennifer's delighted to go along, but the portions are terribly tiny, and I end up starved after paying $3.50 for TASTY but inadequate food. Compromise by buying two peanut butter cups and a roll of licorice candy drops which I nibble on for the hunger pangs through the rest of the afternoon. Out at 5, happy that I brought along my briefcase with the Ds to do at work when the work vanished (which, sadly, it didn't today), because Alice reminds me that we're supposed to practice motions with a prop, so I start things for class at work, with observers looking on with amusement. Leave at 5 and walk over with Alice and finally pay my bill, and the class is fairly good (see next page). It's over at 7 and I walk Carla downtown to her subway stop on the way to the Mattachine Board meeting (see following page). That's over about 8:30, and I get home for dinner in the other apartment, reading, while everyone parties at John's. Walked from the subway with Ze-eva, showed Mal around our place, and watched "The Forbidden City" on TV, far more spectacular than "China" with its treasures of Peking's only museum. Party's over at 11 and John's exhausted and pleased with the thought of going to EUROPE for 3 weeks. I smoke again and come to exhaust myself before going to sleep.
DIARY 3560
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17. Wake early and fuss about Rosey, but get everything together including lunch, having done the dishes late last night so that I wouldn't have to worry about them this morning, and get into the slow subway at 8:45 which gets me there EXACTLY at 9:30. Sit in the chair and she says that the one is normal at gum-line, that I should use Sensodyne for a couple of weeks and it won't be so sensitive, and that the other (which I forget about in my relief, but push myself BACK into the chair to get looked at) ridge in the tooth next to the one she filled LAST time is nothing, only something that the sensitive tongue-tip would find. Beaming with relief, I again get out into the air to find that the atmosphere is REDOLENT of flowers from somewhere, an effect I remember from before. So GLAD that I didn't have to have anything done, and even suspect, from the tone of her voice, that I won't get a bill. How LOVELY, though I agree with John that I'd far rather pay TWICE the bill and have NOTHING done than suffer the tortures of the drill for FREE. Into work at 10:20, but no one's in the office, so I say I got in at 10. Work through with courage and by 3 there's nothing more to do, I've even ordered more new type, and so I can start to work on the Ds, which I do, with interruptions, from 3-5. The whole DAY was great: no drilling needed, local becomes EXPRESS 96-42 and then back to local, completely eliminating my decision to stay ON the local and read, the furriers along 29th are laying out their coats in the windows, the ribbon factory is festooning the clamshell digger and the dump truck with red-green-blue-yellow streamers, Susan leaves name for possible work on my desk, and John's not going out, but I eat and do dishes and get out at 8 for the Thalia, seeing "Kotch" which is cute with Walter Matthau, but not the best show in the world, with an OVERLY simple delivery, again, squeezed thick cock in john and got "EASY, man," for only interest of evening, and "Straw Dogs," which is satisfyingly bloody (though not overly) with the shot foot and the bear trap about the head, but TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE, and delightfully, the long-awaited train at 96th has its NEXT STOP AT CHAMBERS STREET, one of the fastest rides in town, and I get home, exhausted and eye-weary, at 1:15 am.
DIARY 3561
THURSDAY, JANUARY 18. Feel much better about getting up now that the dentist is again behind me, do John in AM, the Mattachine article crush is out of the way, and I'm having time to work on John's stuff even at work. Look forward to the weekend for catching up with the diary, which is getting horribly behind, but there's the confidence that everything will be ALL cleared up by the time for the trip. Even write off a quick letter to Mom today, telling her to send us the coincidental flight for two to Florida for $17 with some land-development agency that she can't use. Get to work at 10, and practice a bit with the motion we're to "choreograph" for class this evening, and again Barry and Susan pass by and see me writhing in a corner. Finish up everything and start on Ds again at 3, but at 4 there's more work, so I call in Alice to tell her what I've been finding that THEY haven't been finding, and she's appalled that I'm through with the Ds, and she says that she and Joan really HAVE to get busy with the E-F section which they're working on, and the G-H-I which just came in, so that I can finish them by the time I leave for Florida. Work through until 4:40 with her, then she has to get back to work, and I clear up a few things with ACC and leave at 5:10, getting to class just on time at 5:30 with the slow-walking Alice (see next page). Then, again, out at 7 and walk her and Carla down 7th and I get to Mattachine, which I've decided I really SHOULD get to after two weeks' absence, and Don's there with a bunch of screamers detached from GAA (see following page). Leave pretty much at 9:30, and I'm starting to read "Gods, Graves, and Scholars," since I finished the last 10 pages I'd had left of "Out of Africa" after reading MUCH of it on the subways all day yesterday---five LONG trips: to dentist, to work, home, to Thalia, home. John's watching "Vertigo" on TV, so I have dinner and leave the dishes for tomorrow, reading through one of the New Yorks which have been piling up with no time to read, and over to find his 11 pm ending is moved to 11:30, and he's nodding asleep during the watching, so I cuddle with him in the chair, getting ready for bed, and we're both flopped out exhausted at 11:35, both asleep in an instant.
DIARY 3564
FRIDAY, JANUARY 19. Up at 8 after sleepily cuddling from 7:45, do the dishes and get out fairly early since I don't have to make lunch. To ACC at 9:30 with a packet of Mattachine stuff to read, then leave at 12 (when thankfully both Susan and Ginny have left for lunch) and leave for Crebos at 12:15, where Elizabeth and Marjorie Hirshberg and Ed and Leslie and Harold all walk down the street to O'Brien's, a local bar-dive with miniskirted bewigged waitresses with potato-grater voices who are quick with the drinks and agelessly slow with menus and food and additional butter, and wait for Margery Dumond, who doesn't arrive until we're ready to leave, citing delays in her bicycle messenger job as excuse, sorry that John and I won't be able to invite her to dinner until after March 1. The food is excellent, and so cheap that I can order a Tom Collins along with Elizabeth and still pay only $4 for the whole thing, including tip. The sole, the frozen vegetables, and the French fries were all QUITE good. Back to work to find them STILL not back, and sign out for a half-hour lunch, and turn in my 31.5 hour card for the week, ALMOST a 4-day workweek! Again finish up with everything by 3 and get to work on the Mattachine editing, xeroxing a number of interesting letters and pages, and typing a letter to the gal from the University of Georgia and xeroxing a copy of THAT. It's been very hot all afternoon because the air conditioning isn't working, so Ginny says I can go home at 4:30 but get paid till 5! Thank her and leave, getting home to sort more things out from drawers, have dinner and wash the dishes, and work an hour or so on the movie list before I shower and shave and brush my teeth and get into the car at 8:15 for the drive with Arnie to Riverside Drive and Tsi-Dun, getting there at 8:40, and sit and read the article on the Russian studies of the Adirondack earthquake that we were IN, and then up to the Cambell apartment for Tsi-Dun (see next page). Last untils 12:15, and we're over the bridge just before 1, so I've missed TV again this evening, feeling VERY tired and stoned, but STILL want to come, so I jerk off VERY thoroughly, shooting WAY up my chest, and fall into bed about 1:45, chilly.
DIARY 3566
SATURDAY, JANUARY 20. Get to work on typing as soon as I can, but get tired of typing and then John's on the phone setting up class schedules and curricula for the spring classes, and I don't want to be typing, so I go into the living room and work on the movie list, finally getting it done, and then retype the two pages that have gone over their double-in-size parameters already: making "over twice" into "over thrice" and "Thrice," and making "Twice(3)" into "Twice (3) and (4)." Then put the books away for the last time for the year, and get back to typing, straining myself to get finished with the 12 pages that I calculate to be exactly HALF the typing effort for the weekend. Have lunch in the meantime, supervise the making of the cheese drops while John has a bath to relax, and get into a few of the letters that have to go out this weekend, sorting things out again, and everything looks doable, unless something comes up to distract me on Sunday. Have dinner and we're finished at 7:15, and John wants to leave at 7:30 to get there at 8:30, so I dash through the dishes, then shave and don't even have time to brush my teeth from the strongly-scented liver that we have for dinner, in order to dress quickly and get out to the car (me taking out the garbage, too) at 7:35. Get parked by 7:50, and John keeps talking about the traffic jams that he fears will make him late for a performance, and says "It's just as good reading here as at home, isn't it?" So I respond, "Maybe you can think of a few reasons," so we don't sit in the cold dark car, but go into the Video Exchange, but the ground floor is now torn apart for storage, and they won't let us sit upstairs. Down to sit on a table, but the gal comes down for admittance, and I storm back up, determined to sit even if they call the cops, and they let me sit. Into the auditorium to sit and listen to chattering kids and candy-chewing guys who sit next to us, and people shouting back and forth, and finally the show starts at 8:40, and it's perfectly dreadful (see next page). Out at 10 and get home to watch Jack Paar with the African kid, and find that Mary Martin's ranch in Brazil is 2 hours' drive from Brasilia in very uninteresting countryside, so it's not worth anything. Into bed at 11 without showering, feeling eye-sore.
DIARY 3568
SUNDAY, JANUARY 21. Up and get right to typing after breakfast, typing the 12 to get me up to date, and then fall 11 days behind with no trouble at all, curse it. Read through the Times, ignoring the puzzle under the pressures of things to do, and start on the first of 17 letters: writing to the Florida Department of Natural Resources about State Parks, the Florida Everglades for maps and information, the Landas in answer to their Christmas card, Rita in thanks for the book, Bernie to say he'd better get here FAST if he's going to catch us before we leave for Florida, Julian Hodges, Jim Schmucker, Don O'Shea, Henry Messer's friends, and Edward Vallish about our coming down on the trip, then send a bill to IBM, order the sex book for John, science-fiction books for me, letter to Bill Hyde, respond to an ad in the Times, and write freelance resumes to Janie Herman of Macmillan and Rhona Johnson at Harper and Row, thanks to Susan McMahon at ACC, and by the time I'm typing THIS, I've had responses from all of them except about the State Parks, Edward, the two books, the Times ad, and Macmillan: quite a good percentage with two more mails to get before we leave on Saturday. That leaves only four letters left to type, but there's just no time, since I have to shower and we're out for John's restaurant for LAST week, and he just wants to wander around in the Village before going to Dunas. I hate the thought of that, but go silently along with him: if it turns out badly enough, maybe he'll be cured of that "let's look for a place." We park on Sullivan, walk up to Bleecker, poking into places, look around and turn down a few because they have too many credit cards, and back to Houston, finally ending at El Cortijo, which I'd though we'd been to before ON the system, but we'd gone before it could be rated. Fairly mediocre, with loud conversation from the bar about cop killers not permitted the chair by the Supreme Court anymore, and we're out at 7:45, so we drive down to the Studio Bookshop, but everything's under plastic, so we drive up to Laight Street for the Dunas thing, which I just found perfectly COLD (see next page). Smoke beforehand, it lasts 9:20-10:20, home, and get right into a cold bed.
DIARY 3570
MONDAY, JANUARY 22. Up at 7:30, laze till 8, ready for work and get there at 9:30, since no one else's there at 9:50 when I arrive, and Ginny calls to say she's not going to be in. Work till 5, keeping fairly busy all the time, and then get to John's---(well!) and eat, and he works on his article for a bit while I call Madge to try to get Cathy's address, and thankfully she answers, so I don't have to go through Werner, and she says that Cathy's moved, buying a house with the $10,000 that her mother and father gave her when she was married, and is now working upstate. Then she asks if I heard about IBM stocks going up, and I said I wondered why, and she said that CDC dropped its antitrust suit in return for IBM's selling CDC SBC for $16 MILLION! I said that was fantastic, and she said everyone expected something incredible, because Williams resigned even though he was only in his early 60's, and everyone knew something was going to happen, like the Consent Decree that birthed SBC originally being signed in 1956 when T.J. Watson Sr. stepped out of the highest post. Sure enough, only a week after his resignation, came the announcement: Frank Cary, formerly of SBC, was the new IBM president, and the SBC president only heard about the coming sale one week ahead of time. So EVERYONE, and all the machines, and all the property, are now the possession of CDC, and the company that I worked for for 9 years is hardly in existence anymore. Hung up and began going over the Cs, but it was quickly 8 pm, and we went over to my place to see Shin Ichiro Ikege's "The Death Goddess" very poppy opera on 13 about an undertaker who's seduced by a death goddess who predicts when a man will die, "dozes," while he switches around the bed and "fools" her. He's permitted to light a last candle, and is born a fetus in his mother's womb! Back to the questions, which last until 10:30, and John's dazed and groggy with fatigue, and I wanted to do something, but don't feel like doing ANYTHING, so I smoke with him and we have quick sex before going to bed, using the Baby Magic and the poppers and the whole regalia, which is nice, even though we're both looking forward to the TRIP as a time to get back into the mechanics of sex with each other.
DIARY 3571
TUESDAY, JANUARY 23. Get to ACC at 10, not even having had time to pack a lunch, but cajole Jennifer into going to India House for lunch, and Susan wants to come along, but Barry again begs out of coming, saying he has an upset stomach and won't be able to have Indian food, and I call Elizabeth, hoping to get her to meet two gals who might help her with jobs, but she says she's very busy this week and can't do it, and later I find that she's been putting together a film on her church group which was shown the following Sunday, so I guess she had a lot on her mind. We left about noon (or wanted to, except that everyone delayed about it until it was 12:30), and got into the small pleasant place in good time, and the food was plain for the most part, the appetizers being downright disappointing, but then the lamb curry was exceptionally creamy and fine, and the $6 tab, total for the three of us, even with the extra poori that I ordered so that Susan could see what it was like, made the adventure worthwhile. Back to work, and leave on time for the DTW class in which we talk about Bill Dunas (see next page), and then I subway home to find that John's waited supper for me, and when we smilingly refer to what we might be doing this evening, it's obvious that we're both bound for the baths again (see following page). Today I start counting the days before we leave on the trip to Florida, and I keep wanting to catch up with the diary, keeping up with correspondence, but things from here on out just slip further and further behind, until the last week is a flurry of effort, many things that I'd like to see go by the wayside (like two doubles of "I Never Sang for My Father" and "Butterflies are Free" on Tuesday thru Thursday and "Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex" and "Where's Poppa" on Friday or Saturday at the Thalia), and I have the feeling for the thousandth time that life is driving ME, rather than me driving life, and again I get the urge to just CLEAR THINGS AWAY, a feeling which is heightened when I find that I'm robbed on Thursday, and now, again, I've managed to fill up another page for a day a week and a half ago that I can't really remember anything happening on, except the following pages.
DIARY 3574
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24. Over quite early, about 7:15, while John was still in bed, and took the 14-15 page remnant of the letter-pad that I about used up for the letters on Sunday, and started pasting on the "Refresh thyself" and other goodies, leading up to the fact that I was giving him $75 worth of JUNK for his birthday: namely, the stuff that he would have done for very little money in India, giving him the feeling of being completely wealthy, which he'd be loathe to spend $2-4 on here in Florida, and I could thus insure that I could get in to see the things I wanted to see. Thankfully, he appreciated the "Indian feeling" and liked the gift, while I did the dishes that I hadn't done last night to get to the baths. To work from 9:30 to 5, though it was actually 5:30, because I subwayed up to 96th and Broadway before 6, with enough time left to go inside the cheapie store on the corner and buy a pair of blue jeans, lavishly belled, for $4.27, and get out in time to walk him up to the Pomegranate Garden for my dinner. The first two dishes were great, but I remarked about the fishy taste of the third dish, chicken in brown sauce, and John said "That's the way it tastes when it's gone bad," and just the weekend before he'd bought a chicken, put it into the fridge, and found that it was spoiled before he could use it. We agreed it must be difficult to run a restaurant with so few customers, and then I SMELLED the meat, and it had a high rank odor, and we told the owner about it, but he ranted about how it was fresh today, how 9 people were coming tomorrow for a special feast, how he'd been in business 3 years, and I thought at one point he said he was making another dish, but then the light in the kitchen went off and John said that was it. We paid and left for the movies "Minnie and Moskowitz" and "Taking Off" at the Thalia (see next page), and I could hear John's hearty laughter as we sat rows apart trying to get whatever there was to be gotten, but it wasn't much: the crowd was old and awful, except for a doll who sat between me and John, looked both ways, and even spread a delectable crotch as I left, but why hadn't he moved NEXT to me so we could have played? Home very late at 12:15 on the subway, and watch Lawrence Olivier with Dick Cavett to 1 and plop tired into bed.
DIARY 3576
THURSDAY, JANUARY 25. Work at ACC from 9:30 to 5, still having things to do through the day, not having any time for spare stuff, and get to the class quite early (see next page). When the class is over at 7, I call John because of the note passed to me by one of the students, expecting happily to be told of a sex party somewhere, so that I could cancel out of Mattachine and have a ball tonight, and John tells me my apartment had been broken into. He mentions that the stamp cabinet was looked into, and I plead with him to check if the album is there, which it is, as are my coins. He says my overcoat was folded over the sofa, but he couldn't think of anything that was taken except the wristwatch that he saw in my carved chest, which was nothing to me. I kept wondering what was gone, so I just went down to Mattachine to pick out the copies of the Times that I wanted, and Bob Burdick was so intent on answering the phone he didn't even HEAR that my apartment was robbed. Subway home, feeling lousy, and root John out to show me what had happened: the lock was jammed, and the storage room window open from the TOP, which led me to think it was opened ONLY as an escape route in case someone came in the door. Police had come, said I should have had a Siegal lock, and then saw that I HAD. John chortled that he'd gone through some of my drawers, taking out the sewing kit from the bottom drawer, looking into an envelope filled with ticket stubs, looked into my stamp drawer but seemed to have taken NOTHING, since I think the one section of the one open box WAS empty to start with, and then John noticed that my binoculars were gone. He'd gone through his shirts, but none were taken, though he took about four pairs of nice pants of John's and his 2-suiter brown suitcase. My red wool scarf was gone, and then John found that though his diamond and stickpin were THERE, his grandfather's gold watch chain and an expensive gold pocket watch his parents had bought for it were gone, though he later rationalized the (1) sudden production of new money on the market, and (2) the fact that a number of fences and people would handle and admire the object, finally selling it to someone who would cherish it more, possibly, than John did. OK, if that's the way he likes to look at it. Smoke and to bed feeling VERY depressed, worried about MORE robberies in the near future!
DIARY 3578
FRIDAY, JANUARY 26. Stick around the apartment until 9:30, when I leave a bit too late to get to Herb Kummel's office at the Dance Notation Bureau on Union Square West at 10, but he wasn't ready for me anyway. Talk about dance and dancers, his background as a dancer, the feud between Laban and effort-shape and Benes notators, the chance that if I worked for them that I would NOT be involved in the IBM-centered activities of working with the new Selectric ball of Laban elements, or with the programs to print and process notations, but might attend classes to see what's going on, work with sales, shop around for cheap mirrors, and in general act as if I were an alter ego of Herb Kummel. Doubt if I'll hear from him, but it sounds like it would be sort of fun, though he didn't like the thought of my working for him part time, though he didn't seem to balk at the $4.50-$5.00 range of salary per hour that I gave him (though for a 35-hour week, the $5 range would be the $175 someone mentioned to John). To work from 11:30 to 5, for a total of 32.5 hours for this week, probably the longest (next to last week's 31.5) I've worked at one place in one week. Home to have dinner, but John doesn't want to go to the Thalia, so I'm out without doing the dishes, and decide I have to buy some books to read, since I finish "Gods, Graves, and Scholars" later this evening, and stop at 94th and walk down to the New Yorker bookshop and pick up two unread Updikes, a Woolf, and a Dinesen, all of which help me fill out my lists, and then get up to the Thalia to see "The Candidate," with a charming William [HA!] Redford again teasing the audience with a tiny bit of skin when he undressed with his wife, and a crushing last line after he's won: "What do we do NOW?" playing into the hands of a Peter Boyle who's entirely different from his "Joe," and "Ballad of Cable Hogue," which is charming with Jason Robards as a guy who finds water and a beautiful blond, but the burial at the end was TOO much, having been run over with that car. Too Barth. Home after a deal of sex (see next page) at 1, starting to read Updike's "Olinger Stories," though I'd read all of them before in other books, what a gyp! Crawl in next to John in bed, yum.
DIARY 3580
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27. I really don't remember what I did in the morning, except that it was a gentle, accomplish-nothing activity like those that held my interest so through my four years of idleness: combining lists, perhaps, or making a new one, as of the total number of people I sent my resume to for freelance work. I went running back and forth between apartments (one of the lists had to do with the list of Updike books, now that I had all his fiction except Poorhouse Fair, his earliest, and noting down the Dinesen I still don't have) while Doris and her boyfriend were subjected to an endless parade of details about watering plants and filling humidifiers and using the kitchen and the foodstuffs for her month stay here while we're in the south: just one week from today! They leave at noon, then John goes off to DTW for his class, and then I read the Voice and discover that they're showing Eisenstein's "Bezhin Meadow" at Anthology this evening, and I get Bernie's phone number in preparation for calling him, but at 4 he rings from downstairs and comes up, brings with him Harry Romback from Washington, who's bright-eyed and large-thighed, with a nice lump where a sizeable cock would be. We sit around and talk, they agree to the show with me, and I call John, who says he doesn't want to join us, so we leave at 5:15, after they sort of cuddle together for a bit, and I feel out of it because my hair needs washing and I need a bath, but we're out by subway in the rain, get to the theater for the interesting film excerpts (see next page), and then wander across 8th Street looking for a place to eat, ending at the Cookery, where they can have the fish they want, Harry's trout without the head, Bernie's sole hot with Tabasco sauce, and my specialty of Portuguese tomato sauce over beef fairly tasty, with Mrs. Grimbles torte for dessert a festival of overly-sweet, overly-thick, revoltingly delicious chocolate and cream. Back in the rain at 9:30 to John's, and he lets me drive to the party, and we get there about 10, finding it terribly straight, to my sadness (see following page), but there's a LOT of pot and hash, and by the time I drive home at 2:30, I'm ABSOLUTELY SMASHED. Then have SEX with them, yet.
DIARY 3585
SUNDAY, JANUARY 28. Back from the party about 2, and sex until 3, where I don't remember relating INDIVIDUALLY to Bernie at all: either only to Harry or in a threesome kiss with everyone fondling everyone. Harry came in my mouth, and his skin was smooth and flexible, pleasant to be with. John got up at 8 and went into the bedroom to type, and I joined him about 9, then watched Darpana on Camera Three, then recalled that there was a Mattachine Breakfast at noon, so I woke them at 11:30, told them about the brunch, and they said they'd like to go. John decided to stay home and work on his article for the Swedish Dictionary which he had to finish before we left on the trip. They took a long time to get themselves together, me not helping by kissing them both and feeling Harry's impeccable skin, but we left about 12:45, and I got there by driving more from intuition than by looking for any specific street name. In to a lively early afternoon (see next page), and when they finally came back from their walk around the neighborhood, it was 3:30, just enough time to get back for John and take off for the dance performance at 4:15. Harry had decided NOT to stay for dinner and take the 8 pm train back to Washington, to get in just after midnight, and Bernie stayed back with him to have sex. Doug immediately turned into an Arnie-like talker, and we jabbered into the performance at the Clark Center by Diane MacIntyre (see following page). Out about 7:30 and back to take the turkey out of the oven at 8, and set the table and settle down to eat, after I got out to buy three quarts of beer and a quart of ice cream: carob and coffee. The turkey is good and the dressing is better, but the conversation around the table is more of quantity than quality, though John gets interested in talking about something or other. All through, Doug's been saying that he's never gotten stoned, and sadly he turned me off sexually when he said "Oral sex is really on the BOTTOM of my list," but there's nothing ELSE to do, so we're over to my place to put on "Lawrence of Arabia" and then distort it beyond recognition, smoke enormously, and everyone lays out and watches the tube, then goes to their separate beds at 11, where I feel VERY guilty about knowing where I stand with Doug, but HE doesn't know where I am.
DIARY 3588
MONDAY, JANUARY 29. Didn't really feel like getting out of bed at 8, but went to wake up Bernie and had breakfast and did some things around the apartment; he left at 9:30, and still I was home, making a final list of all that I had to do before the trip, and decided that I'd stay home from work if I could---since I looked outside and saw that it had SNOWED for the first time of the season, and the paper the next day said that this was the LATEST IN HISTORY in the season that it snowed, surpassing a January 20th first snow in 1966. Called Ginny (whose freelance work I didn't do at ALL over the weekend), and she said there wasn't a rush on the work, so I decided to see the two films today that I'd MISS if I didn't see them today. So I'm out at 11:30 but there's a long wait for the subway, and I dash out in the freezing weather with only at $20, and the ticket-taker says she doesn't have change. I stop and start in amazement, insisting she MUST have change, and she insists I have to go out and GET it. I know how impossible that is in the city, so I just grab my $20 and stomp inside, but the manager, of course, shouts and threatens violence and the police, and I shout back, and he finally establishes that I can have 17 singles. Of COURSE I want 17 singles, isn't that MONEY? Hasn't the show STARTED already? And then another poor slob comes in who ALSO had a 20, and HE couldn't get any change either, and we both pay and stomp into the theater where the movie HAS started, but I don't know that it's JUST started, so I stay to see the beginning the second time (see next page). Out at 2:20, eat in Chock Full O' Nuts across from a black in a marvelous skullcap and necklaces made of linked pulltop-can-tops, and down to 55th Street to pay my $5 for "Bijou" and "Boys in the Sand" (see following page). Then out at 5:30, home to intimate to John that I had a good day, but don't tell him until tomorrow what I DID do because he doesn't ASK me what I did. He launches into tales of HIS successes of the day. Then we're down at 7:30 to the car, but he comes back up, saying he doesn't want to go because the car won't start (generator replaced for $84). I say we'll cab, and we're off (see subsequent page).
DIARY 3592
TUESDAY, JANUARY 30. Before leaving last night (actually, earlier) Bernie told me that Don O'Shea called and would call back at 8. I chose to call him instead, to talk to Helen who told me that Don was in NEW YORK! Then he called again and we agreed to meet for lunch at the Museum of Modern Art, where he would borrow my card to see what was there, so when I went into ACC at 10 I knew I wouldn't be there long, left at 11:45, met him and went to Larre's, which was awful: meat tough, wine watered, potatoes worse than ever, he didn't even finish his dessert. Cheap, but off the list, which Ginny agreed with. Walk him back to the Museum and down to work, a long way, back about 2:15, but only charge an hour for lunch. I'd been hoping to get to the Mattachine Times I brought in on Friday, but I never DID get to a single one of them after the first pleasant flurry of work with them. Leave at 5 for class, feeling in the morning that I had a sore throat, fearing I might be getting something, and the soreness didn't go away entirely during the day, though it was lessened, and I'd called Doug during the day and agreed to meet him at Man's Country tonight, so I HAD to be there, spreading about my disease which I hoped wouldn't show too much by then. Class was only Debbie (see next page), and subwayed home by taking the local down from 18th Street, which Carla mistakenly said was an entrance to the express train, missing another express in the bargain. Home to the mail, which has been piling up with answers to my letters about the trip, and finally Julian calls with his information, Jim writes, Henry's friends write, so the only people I haven't heard from are Uncle Edward and the Florida State Parks. Have dinner, comparing sore throats with John, and his went away early in the morning, and we both decide to go to the baths. I wash the dishes and have things to do, so I tell him to go, and I don't get there until 8:50, where I'm shocked to find the line stretching to the STAIRWAY with people waiting to be checked in, 20 ahead of me, and they make all sorts of announcements that WEDNESDAY is $2 dick night, but don't say that TUESDAY is continuing as $1, now that it's a smash (see following page). I don't get called, and check out at 2:10, getting EXHAUSTED into bed at 2:30.
DIARY 3596
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31. Work from 10 to 5:30, taking more than an hour to take Ginny and Susan to lunch at Ginny's choice of place, Greenstreets on 34th Street, and it's VERY cold and windy out, so the peppery bloody mary tastes good. Back and hear about some of the latest fiascos while I'm checking blues of answer sheets that are just ready to go to the printers: finding a Push Button missing, and find that the question reads "Do 16-20, finding the missing number," when there should be an ADDITIONAL phrase for 16, which is a multiple choice questions, and 17-20 should be done together. But the tape's already in production, so it can't be changed. Also find out that 1 times 7 = 1 has already gone out!!! Then later I find two copies of the same problem, and Ron Tiegert says "I don't think it's too critical that problems are repeated." Compared to what ELSE is going out, I should say NOT! Work till 5:30 because I'm going to the Eisenstein double feature at 6, and get down to find few people having bought tickets. I'll start my notes on "Thunder Over Mexico" here, since it's going to be more than one page: Starts with lovely high snow-covered volcanic mountains, then it has MORE temples and faces than TITS ("Time in the Sun"). Cloth-shrouded faces from the cross-bearers, and this is a LOVE story: brother, father, mother, "Maria," "Sebastian" as the husband. The owner as a SISTER, there's dancing at the fiesta and that's all. There a man-hunt with a LONG gun battle and chase, and the SISTER is killed, giving a reason for the foul treatment of the Mexican peons. There are SENORITAS at the bullfight; but NO bull goes over the railing, no simulated goring. This one is silent with subtitles. More maguey harvesting shots: inside plant; longer trampling---observed by youngest boy. WIFE prays over bloody body. Revolt IS "Thunder over Mexico" and is a bull on fire in the barn and marching BANDS, and drums and trumpets, and marching on plaza from above, and peons running to spell out "Mexico" and sports people, then machinery, near-nude men in sculptural poses "tending" the machines, sementically spewing smokestacks and HEAVY machinery and awful FALSE smiles from the men. It ends at 7:05, 65 minutes long: this is more
DIARY 3599
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1. Get to ACC early to put in a lot of hours to get a lot of money for the trip, and work 9:30-5 for 6.5 hours despite a two hour lunch at the lovely "Once Upon a Stove" way down on 3rd Avenue from the office, but a Serendipity-like place with antiques, good food, and inexpensive prices and waiters with large crotches, with Susan and Ruth. Leave for the last class (see next page) and get down to Mattachine to see if the new issue of the Times is out so I can take my article down to Julian Hodges, but it isn't, my mailbox is filled with things that I don't quite understand, and I'm still recuperating from a terrible afternoon fighting with Pilar, who called TEMPositions to find that there has to be a special authorization from the head man, who's Jerry Steingut and he's on vacation, but Mr. Schmitt does it, and Ginny even signs my card for the four FULL days, assuming I'm going to be in for six hours tomorrow (which I'm not), and getting me a $75 advance. Then home with the pile of stuff from the office (Mattachine Timeses that I didn't read) since I've got to take my laundry in tomorrow and I'll have to be carrying THAT around. Home to find John feeling not too well, but we have dinner and I settle down to catch up on my diary, but just get past four pages (having done the dishes already), when he's in at 9:30, having smoked, with a semi-erection, asking if I really wouldn't like to smoke and come over and have sex with him. Well, it's isn't often that he's like this, so I decide I can do it. Over and smoke and we cuddle while my clothes come off in front of the heater, since there seems to be something wrong with the furnace, and we smoke quite a lot, and then get into the bedroom where he gets out the poppers, and I'm finally up, then out comes the Baby Magic, and we keep going, and he's excited and I'm excited, then he pops another popper and we keep going, and then he gets out the vibrator and I use it on him and he uses it on me and I use it on him again, and every so often we come up for breath, then go at it again, and finally at 11:30, after 2 hours, I demand to come with the vibrator and do, and he doesn't want to, he insists, so we fall asleep.
DIARY 3601
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2. Work around the apartment (after getting up an nuzzling John into a very satisfying erection, and do him nicely, he comes copiously), until 9:30, calling Ken May who says he's 99% sure he saw my paycheck around, so I get there at 10:15, and there's the check, drawn on the Marine Midland Bank at 140 Broadway, but MAYBE I can cash it downstairs. Go down and they say no, so I phone back up and Linda says maybe they can give me cash, so I SLAM down the phone and go to the door, spot a sheaf of folders for prospective customers, and FLING them into the air behind me, hearing someone say weakly, "Hey, stupid!" and out the door and the elevator door closes before anyone can stop me. Feel GREAT about that until Linda says "Our Vice-President will take you down and cash your chick." GULP! I say "Let me tell you a little story," and he seems to APPRECIATE it, and we go straight up to a teller and he says "This gentleman's check is OK," and I get $180 in cash. Then to work, soaking in the driving rain, even INSIDE my rainsuit, and then out at 11:15, only five minutes after I get there to tell them the story, to walk way uptown to the TEMPositions office and have less trouble there, getting a check-cashing card, and walk through Grand Central to cash my check at Marine Midland at 46th and Park, then have a quick awful lunch at Zum-Zum, then walk south to 30th about noon, conscious that I'll NEVER be this far NORTH until I've been to Key West, which is a nice thought. There's a little to do at work, and I do it, until finally it's 3:30, I've said goodbye to everyone, given my resumes to Shapiro, Ward, Mais, Croft, Lenner, Daily, McMahon, and there's just no one ELSE, so I go to Ginny and say, "Ahem, there's no more work," and she says cheerily "Goodbye," and I think her, she says to call back when I get back, probably I'll have a job, and I get home at 4 to start working on things, getting 10 pages typed by the time we have dinner and get over to watch the 3-hour production 8-11 of Joe Papp's "Much Ado About Nothing," the FOURTH LAST play of Shakespeare I'll see, and then watch a rock festival from 11-2, seeing the Edgar Winter Group (with the albino), Doobie Brothers (not so hot), Jim Croce, a folksinger, WAR (Black group, amateurish), Helen Reddy and "I'm a Woman," nice, Rare Earth, poor; Ike and Tina Turner, fast, bed at 2, pooped!
DIARY 3665
SUNDAY, MARCH 4. John's up and over, but I lay around a bit, worn out from the trip and worried about getting a job tomorrow. Out for the Times and see MANY movies that I want to see, there's a lot marked for the TV week, the mail is still stacked around in piles on the floor and sofa in my place, and John's found that Ritha Devi is dancing this afternoon, but refuses to see James Cunningham tonight in HIS last performance up at Riverside Church. We have lunch and get out about 2 (No, I have cereal rather late, after coming with the pornography that arrived while we were gone, and then subway to Japan House, getting there before him at 2:15, while he's gone to DTW to see what's been happening there, and comes back with the news that Jeff and Art have been talking about him in his absence, and Jeff says "There must be a board meeting," as there had been 3 during the past month, to discuss the final disposition of John.) Ritha's announced a number of things that we haven't seen, but one by one they're chipped away, until finally at 5, when we have to leave because the turkey's in the oven and must be shut off, it's clear that she'll be doing NOTHING new, even though it's quite interesting to see her do everything a second time (see next page). Onto the highway to find some enormous tie-up for the Brooklyn Bridge, so John gets off and whips around to the Manhattan Bridge, getting in only a little after 5:30, and we eat at 6, while he discusses everything about his possible leaving of DTW, even saying that he certainly wouldn't be, now, going to Switzerland, which I say is silly, and he says that it boils down to a personality problem between him and Art, but that with Art it's SO serious that he must take into consideration his feelings of guilt if Art commits suicide. I find myself seriously divided within myself in thinking about this (see following page). Then over to see a section of "Point Counterpoint" from 9-10, but it's very fussy, full of unpleasant people either physically, facially, emotionally (frigid), or manneristically. We smoke and have sex, which I'm not really into, Henry Messer calls about NY Police Academy on Tuesday, and fall into bed somewhat before 11, where I hope to lose the feelings of lassitude I have for the past few days.
DIARY 3668
MONDAY, MARCH 5. Wake about 7 and get over to work over various letters and checks that have to get out (including the $10 fine, which SHOULD have been out four DAYS ago, but I didn't read it clearly at the time), waiting nervously for 9 am to phone Ginny, but she's not in yet, and finally at 10 she's in, but has no work for me, but says that Syva needs a content editor for Math Achiever for Grade 2. She comes on the phone and asks how much I want, I can't figure to say $5 or $6 an hour, and ask HER, and she finally says $7, which delights me, so I say "Yes," trying to keep down the excitement in my voice, and she says I can come in at 11, and I yip my excitement around the apartment, hugging myself, singing, skipping about: now I'll have ENOUGH money to pay for my rent by the end of the FIRST week of work, now I'LL QUICKLY save up money for a grander trip, or maybe even enough for Europe this summer with DTW in Switzerland. EXTRAORDINARY how things manage to turn up. Get in before 11, chat with Ginny to find Jennifer at Dell, Susan with loads of work, Ronnie going to California, Alice still there, Celia going upstairs [also, I start AGAIN on level 1 of exercising, having NEVER been so paunchy and out-of-shape in my life, though I weight only 155, same as John.] Talk to Syva, who's panicking with busyness, and Sally explains what has to be done, so I take the sample and work on it until 5, STILL not getting it done in the six hours I work today, which is how long it took Sara, who works off-premises, to do it. But it looks like I'll be able to do it well, and I'm pleased. Home to turkey dinner with lovely dressing left [too rushed to take lunch, but Syva's busy, so I dine alone at 444, expensive, but a good, small pastrami sandwich, garnished by a free apple from the hosts]. John's off to some concert, I talk to Arnie for about an hour about the trip, then see "Winesburg, Ohio" on TV with Jean Peters, looking bowed-down mouth and thick-necked, Albert "Salami" Salmi, and a lovely Someone Bottoms, blond and sexy. Then the nude-filled "And Throw Away the Key" and "Willowbrook" on NET's "Replay" of COMMERCIAL TV's goodies---a switch, and, again, exhausted to bed after showering at 11.
DIARY 3669
TUESDAY, MARCH 6. Sleep VERY poorly all night, partly thinking about all the things I have to do, partly thinking of all the correspondence piled on my desk, partly thinking about the lecture to the Police Academy this morning, partly annoyed to apoplexy with the mating calls of the damn cat outside. Up early again, letting John make beds, and sew a patch from John's flower shirt onto the back of my torn jeans (FINALLY!) for the class, and get out to get there much before 9:30, and so does the Lt. fairly cute, and we're upstairs for the class (see next page). I'm out at 11:45, because the class is needed, walk down 20th being ignored by the guys I just TALKED to, and walk up to work to find Syva AGAIN being taken by lunch-meetings, Ruth and Gary eating in, so I'm across to Allis's Italian Restaurant, finding it almost empty, fast of service, with VERY good Scaloppini Francese, not the best QUANTITY, but good quality veal nicely prepared. Start work at 1, finishing the first unit, and Sally checks it, finds a very few things wrong, and I get into the second one, VERY much messier than the first, with much to change, much re-pasting, art changes needed, but quite challenging and a nice job I do, though I can't finish it today, since I have to leave at the dot of five to get home to dinner and the complimentary tickets to the Joffrey, which are given by Kenneth, who's dancing in Twyla Tharp's "Deuce Coupe." Drive in early, find a parking place right outside, exclaim over the sex show "The Back Row" at the 55th, and inside to find that we DO have the tickets, and meet someone from DTW who says the student rush tickets are $2.50, and that the seats are WAY on the side, fairly horrible. The crowd is a beautiful one, particularly a THICK, TALL hunk in bulls-eye patched jeans with a pink pullover that barely encompasses what must be a 50" chest, and a lovely face, somewhat like the pretty nude in "Dirtiest Show" who's now progressed to some sexy liquor ad. The evening is all jazz, which is interesting in itself, but not entirely satisfying (see following page). Out to drive home in the rain---it has to do SOMETHING if it's snowed only one inch all year!
DIARY 3672
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7. Sex this morning, which is pleasant because John settles into a slow motion with my erect cock which could have kept on forever, and I don't get to work until 9:15, when I finish my second unit in 5 hours, and then the third and fourth are a pair, doing them in the hopefully average 4 (or maybe 3 1/3) hours and a phenomenal 1 hour, but it's one that needed a commercial, only two pages long of audio script and 4 of unit book, which must be one of the shortest on record. Sally checked over my second one, which I hope is the most ELABORATE one, and said it was all fine, and I even got into proofreading some of them that came back from the typist. Again Syva's taken up with a meeting, Ruth's eating in, so I go across the street to the Italian basement, where I have veal parmigian for $1.40, and it's absolutely hideous, gristly, tough, unchewable and awful, so I'll hardly go back, but I had to TRY it to sample its grossness. Work till 6 because of the Mattachine board meeting tonight which I only heard about yesterday, and it's one of the best AND one of the worst (see next page). Back home just at 9:30 to watch the musical version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with a good Kirk Douglas (though he's getting old), and GREAT acting for the parts of the women, expansive expensive sets, pleasant enough music, and a good production. John's in and immediately to bed, so I have the chance to get over and wash the dishes, read the Voice from cover to cover, and get back to take a shower, all trying to waste time before "Wildcat" with Buster Crabbe at 1:15. Watch the end of the Jack Paar show, and he's getting annoyed with someone French for liking someone who sneaked heroin into the US, and he DOES seem, as someone described him, "a raw nerve." Buster's playing one of the bit-part villains in an oil-rigging suspense non-drama, and he's actually about fifth on the credits, after Richard Arlen "star," William Frawley as the con-man, the gal, and some other guy, and he doesn't bare anything, is bested easily in the climactic fist fight with oil spurting over everything, and I'm totally wiped out as I crawl into bed at 2:30, happy that at LEAST such a dreadful show is SHORT. Time to mention, also, John's possible job (see following page).
DIARY 3675
THURSDAY, MARCH 8. John's up at the crack of 7:30, and even though I feel abysmal I force myself up, fill up the sink with more water which is preventing the few bad shells from smelling to high ceiling, and make it into work at 8:45! The art department's dark completely, and only two or three people seem to be on the entire floor, and someone complains about the xerox machine having been left on all night. Get through work nicely until about noon, when Syva announces she'll be able to have lunch with me, and I suggest the Weathervane Inn, where she has beautiful looking sole which she says tastes as good as it looks and I have a fabulous dish of broiled sweetbreads and generous slices of Canadian bacon with fairly tasteless corn. We talk about the organization (or lack of it), the management (or lack of it), her background in math and teaching, Dror's coming from EDI, which surprised her as it did me, and we find ourselves agreeing all down the line, feeling in great rapport, and she begins to talk about having an assistant, and then goes silent, so I think she might even be thinking of me, and here I'm been working there not quite three full working days! There seems to be no doubt but that I'll be staying on for as long as the job lasts with $7 an hour, which turns out to be more than the PERMANENT people are getting, though everyone KNOWS that they get more with vacations, holidays, sick leave, and other benefits, where I JUST get the number of hours that I WORK. Work through until 5:45, taking time off when I'm ahead of myself to talk to a number of people on the phone through the week: Jennifer Daily, Elizabeth, who has a new job in Brooklyn, Nancy Doctor, who may move to the coast, Marty, who may move to Washington, Pam, who has no work for me, Susan, who may be in for lunch, and so on. Out at 5:45 and get to Mattachine for a nice evening (see next page), and get home at 10 to broil pork chops so hot that the second one catches into a greasy smoky fire which open windows don't help with dispelling the smoke, and later John says the windows are greasy. Listen to his call at 11 from Maryland, and he DOES seem fit for the job, and I have to begin thinking SERIOUSLY about what might happen if we move.
DIARY 3677
FRIDAY, MARCH 9. I get back to exercising again, but still my pot's larger than I ever remember, and I'll have to advance to level three soon to get rid of it. Work from 9 to 5:15 to make the number of hours for the week come out an even 33, for an income of $231, or at LEAST $154 after taxes, which means that I have enough to pay the rent, which has been a problem. THIS week's check for the rent, NEXT week's to the kitty, the FOLLOWING to pay back to John the cash I've been spending, THEN to get a tiny bit ahead, so that the NEXT one can go directly for rent, so that the check following THAT will be the first that's not desperately needed, which will be April 16! Ruth and I go to lunch at Weathervane again, and the tongue I have is tasty and certainly generously sliced, but it's a bit tough---her mushroom caps are good, she said, and the Canadian bacon slices were even thicker than those under my sweetbreads. I spend the whole morning trying to decide whether to stay with the temporary service or go entirely freelance, but after talking to Syva, Sally, George, Susan Bierstein, Pete Gibson, and Jerry Steinhart, I decide to stay temporary, which seems to be the thing to do, unless you're a rip-off artist planning to collect unemployment DURING work, which seems risky at best. So much time wasted on that that I barely have enough time getting in my two units today, but do so and have time to talk to Marty, too. Home at 6 to a call from Alix-Marie from McGraw-Hill for a resume, which is flattering, and John's second call from Maryland gives us something to talk about for dinner of liver, then he's off to DTW at 8 and I clean out my shells finally, throwing away three that stink, shower, and phone the theater to find that "The Changing Room" ends at 10:20, so I go to Arnie's at 10:30, retrieve the keys from the magnetic casing under the mailbox, and search for the entry buzzer, which I can't find when John arrives, so I walk DOWN the five flights to let him in, and everyone else arrived about 11:30, and a very unsatisfactory evening of sex begins (see next page), centered around some guy Arnie met at his attendance at Eulenspiegel Society meetings. He DOES get around. Home at 2, still stoned and very tired.
DIARY 3680
SATURDAY, MARCH 10. Wake about 9, have breakfast, work with shells, then settle down to watch "The Invisible Man," fun again, from 10-11:30, stopping to see the beginning of "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne," but it's in black and white, which is a pity, and the effects are similar to the Fabulous Baron Munchausen, so there's nothing to learn, and the acting is so INCREDIBLY bad, and the pace of direction so SLOW, that I turn it off in the middle and get into the study to put things together for editing and typing, and get down to the diary at last, finally typing 12 regular pages to almost catch up, and two pages of the trip book so that I can put the hundred pages into the booklet and start with a clean slate. Also went to buy a ribbon for $2.50, more expensive than it need be, and pick up the laundry, having to leave my swamp-mired blue jeans for a second go-around for free to get them clean. John's out to his meeting, finding that DTW really WANTS to be a small, clubby, individually-controllable group, rather than expanding, and John says he couldn't DO the job they want someone for: simply to search for new quarters and new funding, which he'd find boring and dreary. So he WILL be leaving, WILL want to take the job in Maryland if it's offered to him. He then gets out the I Ching to ask if he should, and he interprets it that he SHOULD, so I ask the question "Do I do well to do as I do?" which means essentially let the choice of the move be up to HIM: if he gets the job, move; if not, not, and come up with Trigram I, which I fear being all STATIC lines (albeit three MOVING static lines), seems to say that I SHOULD go along with him, though it will lead to sadness IN THE END. But of course, it means DEEPENING the relationship: EVERY relationship must end, either through splitting or death; and the DEEPER the relationship, the HARDER the end, but better the hard end than no relationship at ALL, so I just have to KNOW that the DEEPER I get with John, the WORSE it will be when, eventually, he isn't HERE anymore. But that only reinforces something I should have known all along, which may have been the reason I feared a relationship in the FIRST place! He goes to DTW, I watch a good Olivier in "Long Day's Journey into Night" from 8-11:05, with two FAGS as sons, Denis Quilty, about 45, as a 35-year-old; Ronald Pickup, about 35, as the 25-year-old, go out for the Times, read it all by 1, and crawl into bed WITHOUT wandering John.
DIARY 3682
SUNDAY, MARCH 11. I wake about 7:10 and laze until 8, but when it's clear John's not about to wake up, I go to look through the ads and find nothing, then start typing, and get through all 9 pages before he comes over at 10:15, and when I jestingly ask if he got in at 4 last night (this morning), he agrees, saying that he found someone attractive at the Eagle and brought him here, and he was quite exhausted from Arnie's until 2 and here until 4 on TWO consecutive mornings! "It messes up the system," as he put it. I started proofreading the Fs then, stopping with hunger at 1:30 to make lunch for both of us, and he said he consulted the I Ching about what the move would do to our relationship, and it was quite ominous. Back to work and get to the point where they lost some of the manuscript pages on the Fs, and work through to 3:35, when I get over to watch the Russian Gymnastic Show, and was sad to see that they televised only the FEMALES, and the downhill slalom on an icy course that wiped out about half the contestants turned out to be the better show. That's over at 5, and I shower and shave and get out to DTW at 5:45 with John, who's tending the house, and I read through most of the special issue of "Pensées" devoted to Velikovsky. The performance isn't that good (see next page), but it has the benefit of being over early, at 8:30, and I talk with the lovely Guillermo of Kei's group, and then we drive home in the growing fog for the rest of the pork, and when we finish eating it's almost 10, so I do the dishes and get over to watch John watch TV, and I smoke some of the Second Generation grass which he says isn't so good, so I have two pipes and get VERY sleepy when he doesn't come over when I start twitching in my chair, and then the phone rings for him, I go to bed, then the phone rings AGAIN and it's Joan, who wants to talk about Ram Dass, but I say I'm tired and I'll call her tomorrow. Back into bed and want to cuddle up against John, but he's wiped out from the previous evenings, and I debate getting up and jerking off, but it just doesn't seem worth the trouble, and I'm not getting hard, and the overall effect of the grass seems to be toward sleep, so I fall off quite quickly without anything.
DIARY 3684
MONDAY, MARCH 12. Begin to settle into a routine that's very difficult to write about. Up about 7:30 every morning this week, never having sex in the morning during the week anymore. When there seems to be enough time and energy I try to exercise, finding the third level continuously challenging enough so that I don't even contemplate going on to the fourth. Push-ups seem to demand more energy than my shoulders and wrists want to supply, and I'm panting, open-mouthed, after the running-in-place. A few times I get it down to the perquisite 10½ minutes, but other times I'm right up there at the standard 11. Miss a few days during the week, and when it appears that five times/week is impossible, then two or three days will slide past without my doing anything, and the pressures to DO it increase, and I get torn apart by the WANTING to do it and being too LAZY to do it. Then to work, reading on the subway if there's enough room to put the book in front of my face, as there usually is: getting into the nice habit of riding to work about 9, when the cars empty out with everyone coming to work in the Heights, and there's always room in the car to sit down---sometimes for everyone. Then the car fills up again at 14th Street from the express, and there's a tremendous exodus at 28th, but I'm usually well in the lead of the pack, and swing around to walk the rest of the way to work. There it's fairly under control, and I'll leave THAT phase of the week to the next page of regular days. Get home about 6, have dinner, and type 4 pages before 8, when I'm over for Cousteau's film about the "Singing Whales," and some of the footage is spectacular, but why doesn't he show MORE of it? Then watch Liz and Dick with Lucy, with a marvelously funny "MY ring is on HER hand sticking out of MY dress and flapping in the wind, demanding to be blown, pinching my cheek, fixing my hair (no, in fact, it didn't TOUCH her hair!), with Burton looking dourly on. John's not interested in going to Man's Country, so I smoke and get out about 10 of 10, after having called to verify that it IS $1 tonight, and get there for ANOTHER line, this only 9 long, but it takes the nicest part of grass (see next page). Home at 12.
DIARY 3686
TUESDAY, MARCH 13. Another day at work. All through the week the most stable topic of conversation was whether the temporary typist JRC would work out: first she threw in dozens of commas, but left out whole sentences. When she was talked to, she stopped putting in commas and starting leaving a few out, kept making a few corrections that really benefited the writing, and left only words or phrases out here and there. One day I did two units as well as I could between proofreading 10 other units, some for the second and one or two for a third time. Syva continued dashing around like she should have been two people, Dror was not getting the chance to put in more units to be done, so that stack dwindled through the week, on Monday there was an obnoxious black who scarcely worked at all between bugging Ron on how bad the place seemed to be, bugging his girlfriend on the phone to call him this evening, and walking in and out for lunch, then saying that he didn't HAVE any lunch. Then Joan was back for the rest of the week, and we seemed to be making progress toward moving into our new quarters in the "fire escape room." Fraya gave me a Selectric ball for my typewriter, but I wasn't clear whether it was a give or a loan. Took my lunch into work every day, which meant that I got lots of reading done, finishing Updike's "Assorted Prose" today, but had little socializing. Left work promptly at 5 to walk up to 43rd to use one of the free tickets to the Park-Miller, seeing "The Experiment" (see next page), which was longer than I thought it would be, and get out at five minutes to 8, zip over to the subway, getting one down right away, and getting to Mattachine in good time before John Francis Hunter starts to speak at 8:30. Interesting evening (see following page), and home at 10:45 to find John out, so I have steak that he leaves for me, and do the dishes before he gets back from Man's Country, and we talk about our respective evenings, and we both no doubt wonder what moving to Washington might do to just such evenings at these. Make them impossible, but the question is what would they be REPLACED with? More time for my reading and writing would be GOOD, I guess.
DIARY 3689
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14. Alice has been bringing me the dictionary letter by letter, and she first said that she could finish by April 30, and today says she can finish by April 27, so that John and I can finish it over the weekend and get it to Carol Sims, who says that May 1 is the absolute deadline if the book wants to come out on the fall list, which John definitely wants. She seems to be doing a better job, and she seems to like working for Ginny for more money, and Ginny says she's doing well, too. The other Ginny, Cudlap, is marvelously audible from the art department, and I really freak out when I see the people working there, playing their radios, singing along with them, taking whatever pills they're said to be taking, sloping around the hall in their patches and tatters and smudges, shouting with laughter or riffling through their decks of cards because they don't have anything to do. Dror's group seems to be getting larger, and it's a gas walking through the hallways to see what his group is drawing, and since I've seen most of the units, I recognize most of what's being done. Our "office" keeps getting piled up with more and more stuff, and finally the workmen moved in shelves to put everything on, and started cleaning the walls in the office we're moving into, though the dates of the move still seem to be shrouded in uncertainty. Tomorrow I calculate we have only 50 units left to do, which means just over a week of work for 4 people doing 2 a day, and ask Syva what I'm going to do then, and she essentially agrees that it's a good question, and I should ask her again sometime. I could look forward to a couple days off work, in order to get some things caught up with, so that I wouldn't feel so LOST in the things I have to do. Work through to 6, since Avi didn't offer to feed me before the opera tonight, and subway up early, meeting him after getting lists to ENSURE there's nothing I want to see at the Met this year, and the opera's pretty good (see next page), though he doesn't care for Ginastera. Out at 9:20, a boon, and home to have dinner and talk to John about it, and we're into bed about 10:30, trying to make up for sleep lost at various times, a good idea.
DIARY 3691
THURSDAY, MARCH 15. Decide that I MUST send off the resume to Alix-Marie at McGraw-Hill, so I take it into work to revise there, having finally caught up onto my schedule for units, and not having any time to talk to Syva about my future work there. Marge dropped in to chat for a bit, and she said I should bring in my stuff from France, which I go through and find this evening, and she'll be back into the office on Monday. Danni (who looks more like a Danny than Ronnie looks like a Ronny), comes around collecting for the party tomorrow, ostensibly for Jerry Steinhart's leaving, but actually just for the sake of having a party. Sit rather dejected, sorry that it's over, sorry that I have to worry so SOON about what I'm going to be doing next, since the list is down to 44 on Friday, and Syva talks to Dror and decides that WE can do the paging and the art specs for the rest of the units he has not gotten around to, which will take more time, but means we WILL finish them next week. I'm still totally hung up on all the things I have to do at home, and thankfully the mail's low in quantity, since I owe a letter to just about everybody. Mom sends a letter saying that the oranges were good, but not once in it does she actually print the words "Thank you." I leave at 5:30 to make sure to have someone opening the office, and it turns out that Hank is on (see next page), and I do what I feel like, and then leave at 7:45, to get home at 8 in time to eat and retype most of my resume, and still have time to talk with John for a bit and get over to watch "Applause" on TV, which is good with Lauren Bacall and a lot of the original cast, with a great "I've got a date," by her hairdresser and a casual "Bring him along," and a dance sequence in a gay bar which is treated as any OTHER bar and hardly a limp wrist among the crew! I get back over to do the dishes, and John gets back from his dance performance, soaking up everything before his two days down in Maryland next week, and Anita from Switzerland's back in town, and many of the activities are planned around her. To bed WANTING sex, but John seemed too tired to even think of it, and I crawl in beside him, feeling depressed.
DIARY 3693
FRIDAY, MARCH 16. Day started like the old times with waking at 7:10 to rousing erections on both parts, prolonged foreplay, and glorious orgasms for both by 7:30. Felt grand, and told him so. Got everything together for the afternoon, briefcase with French stuff for Marge and to bring back the galleys and the xeroxes of the resume that I finished retyping. Work as usual until 3:30, even getting ahead of myself with some simple units, when the party started, and I passed up the sangria which turned out to be spoiled, starting with the white wine and ending with the red Almaden for two kinds at work, and Syva even said I could bill the company until 5, which was VERY nice. Ronnie was holding forth about "Changing Room" she was going to see tonight, Alice was talking about this and that with her, I clambered out on the fire escape to send everyone from the Art Department back inside, looking at a weirdo book about freaks from Ruth, from the short guy in the Art Department with the long eyelashes, and Bob was around with his torn shirt, Joan didn't show up, which was sad, and Sally wasn't invited, so it may have been Fraya who asked me along, because she was looking beautiful in her green contacts and long violet pullover, and when the door was closed I entered saying "Oh, the orgy's started?" and she said "We were just waiting for you." I told her her ball worked fine. She was happy. Then I left about 4:50, listening to the last bit between Syva and Ginny complaining against Tom, and got home quite high to vacuum the apartment after dusting, and then take a quick shower and get all ready by 7, when Norman Pittenger was supposed to show up, and put away all the stuff in the bedroom, feeling even more desperate, and they arrived at 7:20, perfect timing because the couscous was being slow, and it turned out to be a MARVELOUS evening (see next page). In fact the whole ERA after the Florida trip is turning out to be busy and adventuresome, and if I can ever get caught up in my TYPING, I'll even have some time to start ENJOYING the whole thing. And here I am almost at the bottom of the page and I can't think of a single thing that will take me to the end of this very last LINE!
DIARY 3695
SATURDAY, MARCH 17. John was up and out at 7:30, but I felt somewhat hung over from all the wine last night, so I lazed in bed until 8:45, when I went over to find he wanted to go over the Es and Fs, so we did that from 8:50 to 10:20, and then I did the first batch of dishes, then worked on proofreading the Gs from 11:05 until 2:05, when I stopped and made my salad for lunch, and then didn't feel like going back to work when John left for some conference at 3. So I put some tings in order, made up the bed, and decided I wanted to come with the beedies, and had a very unsatisfactory orgasm very quickly, and then felt at odds ends: so much to DO and so little that I FELT like doing. Read part of the Voice, just to keep up with that, and tried to phone John Casarino and Joan, but they weren't home, and then the bell rang and it was ROGER. Incredible stoned session (see next page) and he kindly leaves at 6:30, which gives me a chance to get ready for the NEXT bell at 6:45, which is John and Jan and Helen LaRue, WITH Mary Rasmussen, who'd decided to give up the cocktail party since LaRue was only invited so lately, and we sit around and drink a special bottle of wine that John got, making it my SECOND of the day (though I didn't drink much of it, thought it was SPOILED, though the others drank it without a qualm) after the plum wine finished with Roger, and I sat around stoned out of my skull talking to Helen and Jan and Mary, and then said I was hungry, and we got into the car for Atlantic House, where we brought the place down with our jokes, talks about staying in monasteries in Borneo, talking about the conference and Mary Rasmussen's phallic recorders, Barry Brooke's asininity, Jan's puns, and the two bottles of wine that we had THERE, my third. The combination was good, everyone liked their food, and John's magnificent frog's legs were flown in from Japan by the same concessionaire who did the business for Restaurant Associates, and so we got the feeling of Four Seasons quality at Atlantic House prices, less than $5 apiece, WITH tip. Left at 9:15, and we walked down to Nancy Doctor's for the going-away party for Elizabeth (see following page; forgot, see DIARY 3762), and I got the Times at 12:30, John watched a TV film to its end at 1, and we were to bed.