1973 2 of 6
DIARY 3699
SUNDAY, MARCH 18. Up about 8, and finish the Times, then start typing until 11, when I watch Camera Three for the film about the filming of "Godspell" and aside from a VERY pretty Jesus, it looks like a flop of misguided intentions poorly carried out: there's hardly "color" in a Mylar background in the Lincoln Center Bandshell, they hardly made good use of the spectacular World Trade Center, and for all the effort with the Accutron sign, it seemed badly out of focus and sequence and POINT. Then, since it was SNOWING outside (for only the second snow we've seen this year), I didn't really feel like going to the Mattachine breakfast, in addition since John wasn't going, having too much to do, so I continued typing until about 1, when we had lunch, then I got through to typing 15 pages to catch up to date at 3, and then went across the hall to sort out the souvenirs from the trip (just something on the list that it's a luxury to accomplish), and gave John the stuff from Cape Romain for Cheryl, not to mention getting even MORE letters to write, and then it's 4, and I'm back over to sort through everything into Mattachine piles and Letter piles and Work piles and TO DO piles, and the amount I'm behind seems endless. Even make a plot of what I want to do this week, and seem to be managing to get it all in. John's going out with Anita tonight, and I decide NOT to go, again because I want more TIME, and then over to watch "The Sisters" with Bette Davis married to a seafaring Errol Flynn surviving a believable San Francisco earthquake in her room, interrupted by a dinner of couscous, which sadly doesn't reheat nicely, and the banana bread smells marvelous in the oven. Start dishes after he leaves at 8:20, not quite finishing when I watch the TV production of Steinbeck's "The Red Pony" complete with vulture-eaten horses and a fairly gripping Henry Fonda-assisted colt-birth, while finishing up the dishes in the meantime and turning to see "No Way to Treat a Lady" with Rod Steiger as a cop, priest, fag, and woman from 9-11:30, when John gets in, saying he's too tired to smoke Roger's grass as he'd said earlier, so we just shower and brush teeth and get into bed at 11:30, ready for another week.
DIARY 3700
MONDAY, MARCH 19. Up at 7:10 when John gets up, and even exercise, and decide to take the Harper and Row test to work to finish, having started it yesterday, and feeling very inferior about my knowledge and pessimistic about how well I'll do on it. Find in the subway station that I've forgotten my book to read, so I have to look at people on the way in to work at 9:30, and then out at 1 to search for something to read, and can find only "Stowaway to Mars" by John Wyndham, a "first publication in the United States," and read a goodly part of it through lunch, then spend a lot of the afternoon chatting with Marge about seeing France and looking through her over-1000-page "Guide de la France Mysterieuse," a mind-boggling compendium of useless but frisson-causing (like the surgeon who amputated a gangrenous arm during a famine, accepted it as his fee, and ate it) stories and engravings which I glance through for about two hours. Also left notice, since John said yesterday that he's DEFINITELY going to Switzerland with the group, so I'll be joining him, and I note there's a Green Guide to Switzerland in English, detailed maps available under four numbers, and I gaze [then I take out about two hours to do research on Switzerland, on mountains, cities, populations, distances, and Liechtenstein and distances to closest cities in the adjoining countries of Italy, Germany, France and Austria] at all the places I've seen and would like to see on the map. Then leave at 5:30 to get home at 6, and we eat and TALK until 8, about his dealings with DTW, and I get over to watch the unsatisfying Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's tribute to Offenbach, with very ENGLISH singers and actors, then he leaves at 9 for a dance performance, I wash the dishes, sit down to smoke, sniff poppers, and try to look at pornography, but it's very un-keep-upable, and I come almost without feeling. Strange fantasies nonetheless (see next page), but I can't say that I'm looking forward to the orgy. Smoking makes me dizzy, so I make popcorn and lie down, not able to read because of trip, and John's in at 11:30, and I feel him, feel him, do and do and do, he smokes beedies, and he finally comes about 12:15, groaningly and with enormous friction, and we're to drugged sleep.
DIARY 3703
TUESDAY, MARCH 20. Wake simply NOT feeling like going to work, and decide that I WANT to waste the 90 minutes to read the last hundred or so pages of "Stowaway to Mars," and that I should REALLY work at home today. Finish the book, exercise, eat breakfast, and get down to typing, doing 3 to catch up to date with the current diary, and getting back to the trip diary, which goes and goes and goes (forgetting to watch "Who, What, Where," where I'd like to make a tally of WHICH TYPE OF QUESTION DO I DO BETTER ON), and when John comes back at 3 I'm still working on it (after taking time for lunch), and I finish 32 pages of it, which leaves less than 20 pages to finish, being at the point where I'm typing stuff from LESS than a month ago, which is a triumph, finally, Want some time to get into other things, but the rest of the time seems to go: I probably do some sorting out of things, reading through magazines and newspapers to make another list of all I want to do, and it seems that the catching up will take longer than the trip, and then just when I'm caught up on the ONE trip, to Florida, it's going to be time to start preparing for the SECOND trip, to Switzerland, and I'll have to work harder to earn more money to pay for that, but then it'll be the trip, and then the cycle of catching up AGAIN. Things seem to be getting better, not worse, but I surely am enjoying it. John's going through hell with DTW, and we speak for about three hours about it; he's decided NOT to go to Switzerland, I insult him by saying he changes his mind like a schoolgirl, and finally we begin to talk about it, and he seems to be resigned to going to Switzerland, and he'll make more things clear to the board members as to HIS views of where the organization's going, and I hope YET to get him to the point where he's again PROUD of what he's done for the organization, rather than taking the brunt of the blame for the difficulties on himself. Later in the week he says that he'll tell Jeff about the obvious PIVOTAL nature of Art Bauman to the organization, which is good. Dinner and hurriedly take off to Tsi-Dun this evening, and I find I've missed a good double at the Thalia today, and back from Tsi Dun at 12 (see next page).
DIARY 3705
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21. It snows lightly on this, the first day of spring, and kiss John goodbye for his day and a half in Maryland. Work from 9:15 to 6:30 to make up in part for yesterday's absence, and talking to Syva about the next job for the 7th and 8th grades, which I might actually be doing, from what SHE has to say about it (and she IS the boss), and I talk to Ginny who says that I can work for HER at the $7 rate, but charge fewer hours proportionately, which is just fine with me (although I SHOULD take some of those days off, since Alice brings me the Ms tomorrow, and Joan on Saturday says they've finished the Ns!). Walk uptown then in the cold weather (which is probably where I caught my cold that came with such suddenness on Friday), trying a couple of places for the Green Guide, and get into Rizzoli and find it, along with a Hallway (?) map of Switzerland which is 300 000:1, not QUITE as good as the Michelin 200 000:1, but having the advantage of being ONE map rather than 4 (and maybe having somewhat DIFFERENT information, not to mention being quite a bit newer than the single one Rizzoli had in stock), and much better than the 1 000 000:1 single map of Switzerland AND Italy from Michelin. By now it's 7:30, and I get around the corner to see "Ten from Your Show of Shows," which includes the episodes listed (on the next page), which goes to 9, at which time I get out and try to have ribs, but their dining room, as it seems ALWAYS to be, is closed, so I'm around the corner of my old place for the WORST piece of 40¢ pizza I've EVER had, and tasteless root beer, and then down to the erstwhile Chaplin-festival theater (which it isn't anymore, so it's a good thing I DID use up the tickets I'd gotten at the "bargain" rate), for the "Erotic Films of Peter de Rome," which were QUITE exciting, the sort of things I'd want to do with my OWN camera, particularly the scenes of spontaneous orgasms, and out at 12:45, subway home, quite hot after playing with myself (see following page), and put on the raga music, smoke, get out all the pornography, and tweak and tweedle myself into a GRAND orgasm, so good that I immediately start on ANOTHER, and get into bed, exhausted, at 2:30!
DIARY 3709
THURSDAY, MARCH 22. Up in the morning appalled at how much JUNK I left around the apartment last night, so after I come AGAIN, I have to put the beedie away, put the popper away, gather up all the pornography and put it back in the drawer, the book back onto the shelf, take the vibrator from the wall and put it back in the bedroom, under the bed, having to adjust the clock which I took out also, push the sofa back after plugging the space heater back in and putting it back, putting the clothes away, putting the grass and the pipe away, getting everything back in order for John to come, and by the time I get to work (after having called to say that I would be late), it's 11:45, and I leave at 12:15 to have lunch with Curtis Dewees (see next page), which lasts until 2:15, but I lie and say I only took an hour for lunch because the stupid guy who's taking Jerry Steinhart's place has passed down the edict that everyone must sign out in the morning and at night, and that leads to a LONG conversation with Syva who says that it WILL annoy her if I don't do it, and it leads into a long discussion in which she finally ADMITS that people are cheating, that she TOLD him that I wasn't cheating, but that she wants me to do it ANYWAY, and even my bringing up the Eichmann thing doesn't change her a bit, though she says she wants to talk about it later, and I feel a fool for making myself so AGAINST her when she's trying so hard to LIKE me. So the rest of the afternoon is shot, since I'm still working on the triple unit of the months, which has be far the most work of any other units for the second grade, and I leave at 5:45 to get over to Mattachine (see following page) just after 6, staying until 9:45, trying to call John, but he's not home yet, to find out how Maryland went, and get home at 10:15 to have some soup since there's nothing in the house, and we talk for an hour and a half about his trip there: starting out optimistic, then being totally put off by the bureaucratic shenanigans he'll have to put up with, and I can only say that I hope he comes OFF his dreary thoughts and starts AGAIN to think of it as an enormous challenge, as he did DTW, and a day later he DOES come around. We smoke Roger's grass and have some fairly incredible rocking sucking sex.
DIARY 3712
FRIDAY, MARCH 23. Wake in the morning and have no breakfast, and get to work without thinking of bringing a handkerchief, and just in the morning there's just a cascade of mucus from my nose, falling down from the back of my mouth onto my tongue. There wasn't any tuna, so I ate across the street in the House of Trevi, and it was almost as bad as the Italian place in the basement, except sadly the sole COULD have been good if it hadn't been cold as a raw fish. Finish up the last of the Month articles, and know that I have to get to the titles soon. News is that we're moving on Monday, and Syva comes around to say we should "come in anyway" which is good because I WAS coming in anyway. Work till 4:30, and borrow $11 from Ron because I have to buy tickets TONIGHT for the Polish Mime Theater, and John says that he'd like to see it on Sunday night, so I have five tickets to buy but only $10 with me. Out and uptown and buy the tickets, on the side but close to the front, and the stage is low enough to see plenty well, and then down at 5, during the worst of it, and the subway is full of idiots: the guy who sings "Fascination" and "Alouette" and smiles at me when I look at him inquisitively, and starts crooning "I'm sexy and you're sexy and we're ALL so SEXY" before I'd looked at him. And then the cretinic genius of a little girl who's an old woman pushing me aside to squeeze in, saying "Jeez, it's got to lighten up soon," and pulls out an Archie comic book which she devours with her bitten red-smeared fingernails on dirty hands. I keep on reading. Home to find John VERY positive about the job, and I do dishes BEFORE dinner, and we eat and I get out at 7:10 to the Polish Mime Theater on the subway, since the car's not starting in the garage. Crowd for the mediocre performance with a few good bodies (see next page), and out at 9:40 to a LOVELY party at Ed Byers on 6th and 8th with champagne and strawberries and a "Conan the Conqueror" picture puzzle with depth effects from the radiant colors, and a cute group of gay guys working on it. Leave against my will at 12:30, and home to lay, but caress John, and sex starts, and we go WAY out with Baby Magic and ROUGH stuff, John at one point feeling like he's tearing my ass apart, but he doesn't come, though I do with vigor, and we drop off at 1:30.
DIARY 3714
SATURDAY, MARCH 24. Again fantastic fanatic sex in the morning, this time I'm DETERMINED to have John and I do, and then he does me with GREAT grinding force, and I'm sore at the left where the scrotum descends, and when I shower in the evening, the corona of my cock looks puffy and swollen and fairly sore. Cold still dreadful, floor littered with Kleenex used at night. Made tea with Constant Comment and orange blossom honey, and the combination was so great I had three cups in the morning and two at night, with DREADFUL consequences. Get right down to the trip diary and FINISH it at 22 pages, getting EVERYTHING done, and even another 100 pages into the finished book, and take time out while John's talking on the phone to read the Voice, and find that EDI is advertising for a WRITER for grades 1-8, and I apply, hoping to FINALLY get into the end of the work that I WANT. John is insisting that I get to the Dictionary, and I DO intend to, but after the diary I want to see what I have to do, and put some things away, and get the letters all in a nice pile, with the ones that I have to answer as soon as possible, and make up a list of things to do, and get all ready to tackle it when it's time to shower and get ready for dinner, and we're talking about DTW again, and we have borscht for diner, which sadly I can't taste because of my cock (how about THAT misprint?) cold. Out then to Kathy Posin in "Subway" which is her "Prism" and "Back Off Bugaloo" changed and lessened (the former HEIGHTENED, however), and a MARVELOUS "Getting Off to MOOG" back, and HER modifications and contractions to BACH'S modifications on the MOOG are perfect, and even her solo, Port Authority, which John doesn't decide to like or dislike, shows an interesting investigation of the human body's dance potentialities. I finish "Seven Gothic Tales" there and at home when we get back at 10:30, and I read a bit of the Times while John sips sherry, and I crawl into bed at 11:30 after two cups of tea, and lay awake thinking about the EDI job, about Switzerland, about writing in general, about all I have to do, and get up THREE times to piss, and finally SMOKE to get to sleep at 3 am. Never drink tea before bedtime AGAIN. Cough through night.
DIARY 3716
SUNDAY, MARCH 25. [TWO weeks behind again, but I MUST catch up on the last week in March TODAY, and last week TOMORROW, so that I can go into ANOTHER busy week with only five dozen critical things to do on my list.] [Actually, I just counted, and it's 12 critical things to do on my list.] Up and finish "I am Elijah Thrush" this morning after reading the Times, then start typing, and through the day finish the fourteen pages that catch me up on the diary, finishing the last even AFTER I go to the Merce Cunningham Dance Recital that John says he's too busy to go to see (see previous page). Still suffering with my cold, and I have two operas to see this week, plus my birthday party coming up on Friday, to which John's invited many people, but also many of them don't seem to be able to come, so I leave it up to him, only wondering through the week if I should call Joe, but he calls on Friday about 5:30 to send his greetings, but he won't be up. I called Eddie also on Friday, but he said he had to close up the movie house at 12:15, and that he'd call when he got out if he felt like coming, but he never did. Have a lunch and dinner with John, and then we drive out to the Polish Mime Theater for the evening of short pieces, which was sadly LOUSY (see next page). I worked on the dictionary from 5:40 to 6:15, taking most of the time to get all the stuff I'd gotten in from Joan and Alice into some sort of order, and John's been on my back recently to finish the whole thing; it all comes to a crisis when he starts getting very angry with my rate of reading, and I figure I read at 4 galleys per hour, and figure that I have something like 14 days of work, or half the month---this all happens next weekend, but I can't think of anything more to write about today. Later I find that my rate is more realistically 6 galleys per hour, which cuts it down to 8 working days, and I even make up a schedule which satisfies him, and then proceed to get about a week ahead on it, so that I can do all the things I WANT to do without him on my BACK. It works, too. To bed at some time, not having sex, which is GOOD at this point, because I'm still sore of cock.
DIARY 3718
MONDAY, MARCH 26. Work from 8:45 to 5:30, for 8¼ hours, and I get the idea that I'd like to see how a 40-hour week feels, since I'll get more than $200 for it (though when the check comes, since it's all at the higher withholding rate, I only get $193 and change, so there goes the incentive to work 40, or even 41 hours! Home for dinner of a soup that is flavorless partly innately and partly because I have a cold, and even adding salt to it doesn't help it, though the wine has a certain acid tingle of coldness after the heat of the soup, which has too little meat in it to be effective. Then get John over, when he's not talking on the phone, to watch Arthur Mitchell on TV with his Dance Theater of Harlem, and he's great with kids, though John ridicules the music they use for the exercises. Then he settles down with a pipe to watch "Gunn," and I start reading the sections of the New York Times from February that Arnie saved for me but that I haven't had a chance to read. Finish with some of them until 10, when John passes me a pipe, and I watch the end of the movie, which involves, which I'd predicted, the leading villainess to end up as a transvestite, and we're working on sex all along, me feeling him up and getting him nice and hard, and we're passing the bidis back and forth to get even more stoned, though I'm wishing John Casarino would come through with more poppers. Then we're twisting and turning on and off the sofa, after turning the television off, and again we both seem to pass beyond the point of excitement into some permanently-hard region of "You'll come before I will," which results in both being too overstimulated to do anything but jerk off with his own most-expert hands. Very weary afterwards, but there's no danger of not being tired enough to go to sleep, though the number of things that have to be done are still whirling around in my head, including putting out the rest of the opera tickets for Avi, in case he wants to cop out of future performances, HE can have the tickets to give to someone else. Bed about midnight, cold and still snuffling mightily from the cold, though the grass seems to clear even THAT up, so that I don't have trouble breathing.
DIARY 3719
TUESDAY, MARCH 27. Avi calls about 7:45 to make plans for the evening, and I find myself doing other things, probably including washing the dishes from last night that I didn't have TIME to wash for the talking before the TV program last night, and getting to work at 10:15. Out at 5:45 and get home in time to have dinner and get right out for the "Coronation of Poppea" (see next page), and Avi, who left at the end of "Beatrix Cenci" because he didn't like Ginastera's music, left at the end of the first act because he wanted to get back to see the Academy Awards. I figured I was going to buy the Times tomorrow anyway, so I could get the winners from the paper, so there was no reason I couldn't stay to the end, about 10, and get home in time to see the only awards I wanted to see ANYWAY. Home about 10:15, and had time to see the most tasteless production number based on Disney yet, and some banal remarks, and to CATCH the performance of Sasheen Little Feather, who rejected Brando's Oscar for the Indian Mission, and someone in the audience had the NERVE to boo that statement! Shows how entirely self-centered some characters can be. Since all the actors nominated were from movies I hadn't seen, I had to see at LEAST one film to catch up to date, so I was happy when the "Godfather" won the best film award, since I had to see it anyway, now that BRANDO hadn't won the best actor award. Michael Caine and Rock Hudson looking perfectly dreadfully uncomfortable as hosts, and it was a pretty awful show that I'm just as happy I didn't see all of. John came in toward the end, from some dance performance or other, determined to milk the dance scene of New York dry before he moves out of it IF he gets the job at the University of Maryland. I don't care for THAT, as he doesn't care for opera, and I get the feeling that we're doing LESS and LESS together, and since I have less and less time to spare, it just makes the situation worse. It seems we're both holding ground, fearing to lose any, hoping to get back to SOME sort of normalcy when the dictionary's OUT of BOTH our hair at the end of the month (and my $7/hour job ends, too!). Bed at 12:30.
DIARY 3721
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28. Avi suggested that I could get some cold food at his place before the opera, but I felt that I needed the time at work, particularly since I'd begun reading the series of articles about the theft of Mayan antiquities from Mexico and Guatemala, but Monday's was gone, and Dror wanted some article from Monday, too, so I decided to go to the Times place and pick up the three day's papers. Got there about 9:10, and find that it's not open until 9:30, so I stroll down to 42nd and into the dirty bookshop, which is crowded even at THIS hour, and there are lots of non-hard books on sale for even 75¢ and $1, which will surely go up if porno is made illegal again (and maybe I should stock up on it?), and look through the latest stuff, and the BEST is one on Masturbation, again, but it's $6, and I'll wait for it to come down (ha). Then there's a sexy one about an Ejaculator, but since they have to put it OVER their cock, you can't SEE anything. So it's a loser. Back up at 9:30 and get my copies, then walk down in the brighteningly spring-like weather to work at 9:45, and work through until 6:15, Then walk over to have a slice of pizza on the NORTH side of 32nd Street before I take the subway, and it's even WORSE than the other place: and the crowd is pathetic: kids with their mother all of whom are obviously undernourished and aren't being helped HERE, and a black with a congenital fist for a hand which makes him look like he's holding onto a severed thumb so it won't get lost. Out almost worse off than before I'd gotten in, and up to wait until 6:55 before they come in and Arthur is very tall and quite cute in his metal-rimmed glasses and slimness (can't BELIEVE he used to weigh 200, and he's down to 135 and looks QUITE sexy). But they both don't like it, leave at the intermission, giving their tickets to two young gals who talk next to me during the NEXT act, which is lots of fun (see next page). Out at 10 and get home to sort through some things before John comes home, but we're both too tired to have sex, and I smoke to make sure I'll be able to sleep, and vaguely feel like coming, but don't have the energy to do anything about it.
DIARY 3723
THURSDAY, MARCH 29. Force myself out of bed early to get to work at 8:30 and work through to 5:45 to put in an 8-3/4 hour day which means that I just have to work a normal 8 hours tomorrow to reach the magic 40-hour mark. Getting through with much of the work, but it's clear that Syva's been directing the others to work on OTHER things, because there were 16 units at the beginning of this week, and I do 10 of them by the END of the week, and Sally and Ron are kept busy doing other things. I'd talked to Syva for a time, and she said she was expecting the manuscripts for grades 7 and 8 in the middle of April, and she said there would probably be things to keep me busy, so I was willing to go along with her. But it seemed clear to me that there wouldn't be much to do next week (but I have no way of foreseeing the units that Dror will make me do over because the pages are too crowded. The five units that end up missing, probably due to JRC, the typist, and the two units that are so badly done that I'm allowed to REWRITE them). Leave and get down to Mattachine, making such good connections that I get there at essentially 6 pm. Dick Smith is there, saying that he wants me to read something, mainly by coming into the office on Saturday, or by calling him, but I just don't feel like doing it (I have a feeling this was LAST weekend). Work on the files (see next page), and leave at 9, feeling that I've showed up, and I want to work at home, so I get out, get home to broil my steak and eat it quickly enough to be able to get to work at 10:10 pm, take off a bit of time to do the dishes, and then continue through until 12:40, when John comes in from the trucks, or maybe the Elgin, and we chat about the day, and then get to bed. I'm still shitting poorly, and I still think there might be something wrong with me, but there just doesn't seem to be TIME to check up on why my breath seems to be smelling more, my gums NEVER stop bleeding (I need a new toothbrush, is part of the reason), and I, about once a week, feel faintly dizzy and nauseous, as if my eyes go slightly out of focus, or as if I've just come off a roller coaster ride. But all I need is TIME, TIME, and MORE time.
DIARY 3725
FRIDAY, MARCH 30. Work 8:30 to 5 for the magic 40 hours, and though Diane had asked me when my birthday was, she must have forgotten, because the fantasized excuse of my Friday birthday for another office party didn't come out. But Susan McMahon came into the office and wished me a happy birthday after she was told about it (sending me a card right away, too), and Ruth and Gary joined in with their good wishes. Home with a stack of stuff from Alice under my arms, and there in the middle of the floor is a box that says it contains an ice cream freezer, and indeed it does contain just THAT. Love John! He didn't like the eagle on the side, so he took it off and replaced the brads in the ragged holes. Through to decide we wanted coffee ice cream, so I went out and got a load of ice for 25¢ after I showered but before I dressed, so that I wouldn't have to go out in the rain afterward. Arnie was the first to arrive at 7:30, and helped me around with the ice, and at the next ring it was the jackpot of Kenneth and Sergio, Azak and Henry Messer. They were all shown around our apartment, and Sergio was asking about stamps, so I got some of them out for him, and opened his envelope which contained a marvelous hand-painted card with blue and red that took on depth in my vision, and out poured a handful of Uruguay stamps, and since he was looking through my album in the living room, he could SEE that he would be filling so many of my empty spaces. He expressed interest in many of my blocks, and he even has a '73 catalog to price things with, though I hope he gives me ENOUGH of a bonus for my blocks of four. Henry amazes me by giving me a box which says something about a yellow tulip in German, and I open it to find a CANDLE in the shape of a tulip. My mind is blown, I laugh about how much John dislikes artificial flowers, and showing it to him he immediately says: "Oh, LIGHT it," and Henry's gift goes down to a greasy puddle on the dining room table in just a half an hour. Azak is talking to people in little corners; Gerald is looking very sexy in his graying beard, and John Casarino and Henry BOTH look very thin, though John is particularly
DIARY 3727
SATURDAY, MARCH 31. Up at 7:30, leaving John to sleep (MAYBE we had sex), and I get started on the first batch of what I think will be THREE sets of washing dishes, and then work on the dictionary from 9:25 to 11:30. When I hear John wants to eat at noon, I start on the dishes then, doing the rest of them in the second batch (except for the ham carver, which I forget), and then we have lunch and I get BACK to work from 12:50 to 1:30, then from 2 to 2:15, when I go over to watch the good Humphrey Bogart flick "The Enforcer" about a gang of murderers for hire with a BUNCH of good actors, except for the simpery actress who plays the key role in identifying the head of the gang. Work more from 4:30 to 6, and then have dinner before John goes off to see something at DTW and I subway in to see "Ubu Roi." Just a look at the program promises more than the play delivers, because everyone's been associated with "And Puppy Dog Tails," "Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit" and "Flaming Creatures." But Peter Burnell as Pa Ubu is so uglily made-up with his freckles and pot belly and scrawny arms, and his underarms are so visibly sweating in his increasingly-dirty undershirt, that the smoothness of his skin UNDER the makeup doesn't help me think that he's the popular Pretty Boy variety that the program says he's of. Linda Kampley is VERY good as Ma Ubu, baring her reddened teeth in a snake-hissing snarl, fiercely staring down Pa with a red-rimmed glare, sounding like Judy Kipnis at her most acidulous, and flouncing around the stage as if she owned it. Ed Hyland has a cuddly-bear face with a marvelously golden Brillo-type beard as a number of characters; Jerry Oliver as MacNure (shortened to Ma'Nure) is fag, fag, fag, and not attractive; Alan Storck is rather LIKE a stork, long and gangly with a MAGNIFICENT hooknose; Melinda McLean is fairly memorable as a tiny horse, a newsboy, and Bolusass; Terry McGiver as Buggerass (with a padded cock attached to the back of his trousers cut off at the scrotum), a Senior at Richmond College, is absolutely beautiful, and if he USES that body, he'll get to the TOP by going to the BOTTOM. Michael Nobel as Gyron might be good under all that makeup; Rita Litton as
DIARY 3729
SUNDAY, APRIL 1. Finished the New York Times last night when I got home, before John returned from the trucks, and we got up later than usual, at 8:15, and I went right over and worked until 10:55, when I barged out in the middle of John's party for the photographing of the DTW company in the rain on the Promenade, and poor Kathy Posin called at 9:30, saying she didn't know where anyone was, being 20 minutes late in arriving. Over to watch the first of two parts on Leni Riefenstall on Camera Three, and then leave in the rain at 11:30 for the Scrabble tournament at 11:45 (see next page). Back just after 5, and work from 5:20 to 5:30 in making up a SCHEDULE of the pages that I have to do between now and the end of the month, and I decide at this point that I have to take off Tuesdays and Thursdays from work during the month of April to make it work, and I'm sorry it has to be done, but I DO have the obligation to John. Then we have dinner early, and I do the dishes and get out in the STILL driving rain for the YMCA for fifteen chapters of "Captain America" (see following page) which had once before been done at a midnight show at the Elgin, but this seemed a better way to sit through the five hours. Called Arnie, but he was busy. Get there just at the dot of 8, and pay my $2 and am appalled by the squalor of the room and the double squalor of the youth and agedness of the men watching. There's one guy who sits down behind me who stares holes in the back of my crotch, and whenever I glance around at him, he's staring me down with his dark intense look. His long black hair is stringy and balding on top, however, though his tight black jeans bode well for goodies within. So I stand in the back for a bit, hoping he'll come back for some genteel groping, but he doesn't even turn AROUND. Then when he leaves at 11:15, about the time I feel like leaving, he SEES me putting on my coat, but when I hit the lobby and the street, he's nowhere to be seen. Settle down to walking the wet streets for the subway, and stop for a piece of the LOUSIEST PIZZA I've ever had (this was LAST night, after Ubu). Home at midnight, faintly headachy, busy week ahead, though I hope to WORK a lot, too.
DIARY 3732
MONDAY, APRIL 2. Get to work at 9 and work only until 4, since the only thing I want to see on TV all week (what a relief!) is "The Misfits," and it's a very fast-moving movie for all its uneventfulness; with Marilyn Monroe being given some dreadful lines about how she wants to die, and in some of the frames she looks intolerably old, puffy-eyed, and lined, though when she's to look gorgeous on the seat of the car next to Clark Gable, who also looks ancient, she surely DOES. The horse-roping scene IS quite brutal, but her screaming in the desert is a bad play: just not believable, and her screams are TOO stagy to be believed. Paired with Montgomery Clift, also dead, it was quite a movie. Over at 6 and over for dinner after working from 6 to 6:20, and after dinner, when John goes out to some dance performance or other, I work from 7:55 to 10:30 and then 10:55 to 12, probably stopping to wash the dishes. I hate this constant working, and the mail is nagging me more and more to be written, but I keep thinking of the whole month of FEBRUARY spent away in Florida, and the whole month of JUNE being spent away in Switzerland, so I really can't complain, as long as the $7 an hour lasts. But I have NOTHING in mind for when that's over, and the newspaper doesn't show anything in the line of ads, and I even TELEPHONE the EDI people to see about the writer's job, but though they say I have a "tremendous plus" with my experience, they'll be sending out a writing test to everyone, but as of TODAY I didn't get it YET, so I guess they've chalked me off. Pity. My desk at work is loaded with things backlogged: the two that I'm rewriting, the two that I have to re-do because of JRC, though there's a nice touch of finding ONE of them in another envelope, the edited script, because that then tells me the page turns and the vague layout, so it's easier than ever to re-do. But Dror turns back two OTHERS to me that are too long for their pages, so my desk IS loaded, with the two that I'm finishing up from the last that I signed out. But Syva says we're still ahead of schedule, so all's right with Appleton in my life, anyway. Bed tired from the constant READING.
DIARY 3733
TUESDAY, APRIL 3. Up at 7:30 and make my lunch and get all ready for work, and then at 8:15 John and I settle down and check over the Gs until 9:15, still waiting the Es and Fs for the manuscript pages which haven't been sent yet, primarily because poor Ken May's down with hepatitis! I'm reading the "First and Last Men," and talk to Gary and Ruth about them, and get LOTS of ideas from reading it (see next page). Leave work at 5:30, having talked to Syva, and she's even gotten to the point that she says if I have a few days with nothing to do, it's OK with her if I just sit around and WAIT for the stuff that's supposed to come in for grades 7-8 as early as the middle of next WEEK. Write notes (see following two pages). I get angry with not knowing what the compositors are doing with the layout, which means I can't do paging accurately, and talk with Syva, who's saying that the 7-8 units will be FAR more difficult, with much more math and verbal material, and she says we WON'T do paging. I say the troubles we had on 3-6 because of Examples on the wrong pages, whole unit books that had to be redone because they were actually STARTED on the wrong half-page parity, and that we'd have 85% of the work for paging done already, so WE might as well do it, so that we'll be SURE that our paging and references to illustrations are OK (despite the fact that, thank goodness, we don't have to say Turn the Page anymore). She agrees, saying that she likes the way I take a personal interest in the project, implying that there are OTHER people who DON'T, and I know she's talking about Sally and Ron, and maybe even Sara. Feel great, and she praises my picking Joan to go through and find examples of problem types so that Ann Herrick can set them for spacing. Looks VERY good at work. Home at 5 and John's eaten and out early to something, and I do the dishes, finishing at 7:45, and then over to smoke and get ready for the baths for the first time in over three weeks (see subsequent page), and I smoke the good grass and get really stoned, feeling great in the hallway, and in for a good evening with Frank and Mike---at least I can remember their NAMES. Home at 11:45 and John's in bed already, and join him to sleep.
DIARY 3738
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4. Up and to work early at 8:45, and I've started keeping a list of the units I have left, and get back to the rewriting finally on the last two units, figuring we WILL get the last few units in by the end of this week, and Syva's saying there'll be work that I can do after I'm finished. Even Joan, the typist, knows that we're coming toward the end, and she doesn't have much to do. Subway home at 5:30 and John talks me into going to see Anthony LaGiglia at the Cubiculo. I'd sort of decided that I really didn't HAVE to see it, but John said that the people who were doing the dances for him were particularly good for him, and he was about to branch out into a new era of great personal dancing, so I decided to take him at his word and go along. So we ate and I did the dishes, and then smoked before we left, much to his surprise. But we get out to the garage and find a rented Cadillac sitting in front of the driveway, so he curses and immediately gets after letting the air out of the tire in the rear, so I bend down and throw the tube cap into the gutter, thinking that THAT's really a nasty things to do, quite high, and let the air out with one of my keys, looking at the white sidewalls gradually sinking down so that the shadow of the curb looks like rising water against the sidewalls. Fantasize the cops taking us to jail for such a silly thing, since we ARE breaking some sort of law, I guess, and just when I'm ready to stand up and straighten my legs, there's a voice behind me saying "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" and there's a group of two gals and a guy, carrying what look like bags of groceries, and they demand to know John's name, and John retorts very strongly that we should get THEIR names for blocking the driveway, and I fantasize that they'll throw rocks through the garage door and wreck every car in the back, but John's stomping off toward the subway, so I just follow behind him, bemused by the whole thing, and get to the Cubiculo to sit around the lobby looking mildly at everyone, and see some sexy trousers on a GUY and it changes into Barbara Roan, so I give her a VERY strange look that she won't forget, and then we're in to the performance, which is a very good one indeed (see next page). Home and bed.
DIARY 3740
THURSDAY, APRIL 5. Up and work from 8:15 to 9 on checking the Hs of the dictionary, and then make lunch and get to work at 9:45, to finish the last of the units and get the lat things to Dror, so that I can go to Sally and say that I haven't anything to do. Work some more on the composition work, then hand it in to Syva and by then it's 5:45 and I take off to Mattachine, getting in at 6 (see next page), and when there isn't much to do, leave at 7:15 and get to Arnie's for the orgy (see following page). Poor Arnie said that Guy St. Clair SAID that he wasn't coming because he was into a one-to-one relationship with his new lover, and then the OTHER couple, with the photographer from the Joffrey, said that they were into a one-to-one, and John V tried to call John C who had a test he had to study for, and Parris Mitchell never DID show up, so when I got there at 8 I didn't know I was going to be the ONLY guest aside from Alvise and Ted Davis. Help Arnie make the salad dressing after he borrows the vinegar from Pope, and then hop into the shower after shaving and brushing my teeth. Get shoes to wear, but can't even go near my shirt when I come out, so I go into the kitchen to instant effect: Alvise is resplendent in black suit and silk tie and vest, and he ogles my "beautiful body" and Arnie gives me a red shirt. We sit around talking about the weather until we decide no one else's coming, and then out comes the food: first the endive and white radishes (first in AGES) and parsley with the salad dressing, then the chicken soup with bread crumbs in the mushroom caps which are so marvelously good, then the lemon and tomato-pepper ravioli, and everything's very good, including the wine which goes around and around, and I said Ted James would start, but it seems to be up to me, so I lean across the sofa and tell Alvise that he's obviously hot, but HE takes to my shirt buttons, Ted starts undoing my belt, and Arnie's clearing things away for the rest of the clothes to come off. So there I am, totally surrounded by the three kissing and chewing and biting me, and I actually get a bit hard before all the clothes come off and we're into (see following page).
DIARY 3743
FRIDAY, APRIL 6. At work from 9-11:30, and from 3-5:30, and during those I proofread the LAST of my units from Grade 2, heard from Syva that she hadn't picked up the last two re-done units from Sara, so there were three that had to be finished next week, but otherwise we were done on schedule. I ended the day looking through catalogs of equivalent programs to order for help on grades 7-8 and 1, and then looking into IPI, an old ACC project that turned out to be fairly ineffectual. Home at 6 and eat very quickly, leaving the dishes for tomorrow, and getting [oh, yes, that lapse in time at work was spent at the New York Police Academy---more about that on the next page] out at 7:10 in order to make it in plenty of time to the New York State Theater to meet Avi and Arthur at 7:55 for "Tales of Hoffman." I'd called Marty today to ask him about his job in Washington, which he didn't get, but he said that he hated the unit set and the cutting of the Epilogue. The opera wasn't the best I'd ever seen (see following page). There just isn't that MUCH to talk about when the day is spent only in one of three ways: working, talking for Mattachine, and going to an event which I intend to "review." And I'm getting very impatient with these pages anyway, being tempted to turn the regular day pages into a "something special" page when there's nothing to report for that day. Of course, if I did the days EVERY day, there'd be more detail to give for that day, or I could start one of the extra topics right here, devoting more space to it, but this, itself, I consider a waste of time, but if I don't think much about it, the letters fly from my fingers, except when I have to pause because I'm getting TOO self-conscious about what I'm typing now, right at this moment, having to spell out the words partically, how's THAT for a portmanteau, but anyway I'm about to the middle of the page, and this day's been a waste except for the two special things, but those two things are worth the day anyway, and I can see the hole in the paper, so I only have this, the next-to-the-last-line to type on, then shift to the LAST line to type on, and I'm finished with this nonsense for THIS day.
DIARY 3746
SATURDAY, APRIL 7. Up reluctantly at 7:30 and over to get things sorted around for the proofreading, doing the dishes before 8:10, when we look at the Is, and then I get to work until 2, when I finish the first half of the entire book, and we have lunch (I have lunch, since John ate alone and then went out bicycling), and I finish reading "The Last and First Men," and "Last Men in London," and look forward to continuing with his "The Star Maker," and then at 3 get in to start with the horrible task of catching up on the diary again. ALWAYS SOMETHING. Type 11 pages by the time it's 5:30, getting up at least to a WEEK ago, hoping to be able to finish tomorrow up to date, and then over to shower and shave in preparation for the Dil Mahal, which John's suggested, and won't be swayed from: I suggest we stop at the Szechuan Gardens, and he mumbles "If we can find a place to park," and we pass two of them, saying "We don't fit," and end up where he wanted to go anyway. The egg curry is VERY good, though I don't know why I expected the eggs to be SCRAMBLED and not hard boiled. Through all the food and finish about 7:30, with lot of conversation. I'd felt that he was being distant and more distant from me: getting sex at the trucks or the Elgin (as tonight), having no sex with me, sort of NOT looking forward to tomorrow night's dinner, and I asked if he were having some kind of problem, and he suggested that he was tired: the hassles at DTW were taking a lot out of him, and since he has LESS to do now, and not sure what he SHOULD do, each day he works there is more and more of a torture, and he has 8 more weeks to go, so he's got to get used to a bad thing. But he chats and talks about all kinds of things during dinner, so I'm convinced it's nothing really connected with me. Drives me down around the level of the theater, and I'm delighted to find that ALL tickets are $2.50, I guess because they're about to close, and the crowd doesn't get too large. I take down all kinds of notes (see next page), and then buy the Times and come back to finish it all by 1:15, getting into bed JUST as John drives into the garage, saying that the movies and sex were good, and we doze off.
DIARY 3749
SUNDAY, APRIL 8. Checking more letters with John starts at 8:20, but he's quickly tired and then I continue with proofreading until 10:55, when I go over to watch the second installment of the films of Leni Riefenstahl (see next page). Then back to work from 11:30 to noon, when we have lunch, and talk about DTW and the dictionary, then back to work from 12:55 to 3:05, when I start getting ready for the dinner at 5, which is changed to 5:30 when Don can't get there early. It's raining, mixed with a few flurries of snow, and Alan Henderson calls to say that it's been flooded up in the Bronx where he lives, and I figure he just wants to sit home and watch "Wizard of Oz" which is on at 6:30 this evening. I type 10 quickly, still not being able to catch up, though I'm up to Saturday, so I'm really only three pages behind at this point. But by now I'm 14 behind, and have to STRUGGLE with myself to keep typing. John's got the whole kitchen smelling heavenly with the brewing of the couscous, and it turns out that Don Goodwin is the first one in at 5:40, and the evening begins (I'll start it HERE because there's nothing more to say about today). Curtis arrives just afterwards, and then Henry and Carl come in AFTER we've shown the other half of the apartment to the envious two. John had fantasized that he and Carl would adjourn to the other place to wallow in sex, but he seems anxious to stay with us, so after dinner (the appetizers of the peppery cheese things were marvelous, the rosé that Curtis brought went VERY quickly, and there were lots of pieces of the last pecan pie (which John unwisely said was a week old) left on the dishes when I carried them in to wash them) he went out for a walk, forgetting that Anne Sahl was to call him at 9. We finally got talking about making money for Mattachine, and they heard Henry describe his "open bar, home movies, and orgy following" parties for which he charged $10, but nowadays it would COST that much, so it was no use doing it for les than $20. I said I'd come if he held one, and he figured I was about the poorest, and figured he might try it. They talked about hiring Carnegie Hall and other places, but then
DIARY 3752
MONDAY, APRIL 6. Get to work at 9 and finish looking through IPI, but Syva seems to have decided that I'm going to be doing part of the planning for the new units, survey the initial 7 units, make list of thing to check, so I have lots of things to do, getting Barbara Weller into a series of conversations about who we should talk to and when, and I'm learning lots of stuff and Barbara's learning from me, and Syva's free to do what SHE wants, which is what I told her she COULD do. Leave at 5:30 and get home to type 10, getting far enough ahead so that I don't have to stay home tomorrow, and can type 10 pages and get up to date to Saturday, and then watch VD blues on TV. Try to get John interested in sex, but he says he's tired, and we haven't had it for a bit, and I'm wondering if there's anything wrong. Ask him about it at one point, but he says there's nothing wrong with ME, and I finally phone Azak at work and make an appointment to see him on Wednesday at his new apartment. My new list is preying on my mind, so today before going to work, I stroll down Park to the discount drug store and then up to Falk, where they have the toothbrushes for the Broxodent, and I get a pair of them, forgetting that I have some old ones in the drawer that I could use. Buy toothpaste, too, but it's very expensive. Then tomorrow I go onto Atlantic Avenue to try to find that old storybook I read when I was a kid about the family with servants who set out to climb a mountain, and everyone dies off, finally the two sons die, leaving only the husband and wife, and when they reach the summit of the Himalayan peak, the wife dies, and then the husband steps off UPWARD from the mountain, and I forget what happens after that. She says she's never read it, but that I should try calling librarians in the larger public libraries to see if any of them would know what it was and if they had a copy. I try to do one item a day, but bog down somewhat. Keep trying to get through to Arthur, but no one seems to be answering his service. John's in bed early, and I might jerk off again, just because there's nothing better to do, and I'm very nervous from the pressure of the two jobs I'm trying to do. Things will get even worse tomorrow, too.
DIARY 3753
TUESDAY, APRIL 10. Into work at 8:45 to 5, and Syva sets up a meeting with David Rodman at 9:30, but then I get a call from Cynthia Litvin from the "Who, What, Where" show, saving that it has to be Friday, April 13, and I dash in to Syva to get the meeting changed to Thursday, which she agrees to. Work on people lists, talk with Dror, Ginny Croft and Anne Harris about scheduling. THEN Janet Mais calls from the 15th floor and at 4:00 I go up to see the Computer Programming book that she has the first 100 pages of the 300-page length for, and she wants me to index it. I call Betsy Feist to get time data on indexing, and she can only say she pays someone 15¢ an item to do it, and that Edward did it, and he says it took him something like a day to do 40 pages with lots of passes back and forth, and I figure I can practically MAKE UP the topics and simply record the pages. Remember that I can just leave them on cards, too. So the week's stacking up as a busy one, and I can see that I'll have to work hard to keep up to date on Thursday, which is a bad day. Home and John's friend isn't coming tonight, but I've resigned myself to going to Man's Country, and John's going too, so we're over just before 8 after I do the dishes. Again the line's a long one, but there are a couple of cuties on the line that I fantasize having a great thing with upstairs, but as usual I never see them again. John's in the steam room, so I'm out of there (having had a GREAT deal of trouble trying to open a mini-locker with a gym locker key) and upstairs, where EVERY room's taken with someone lying, and I don't see anyone appealing so I'm into the orgy rooms and a few nice people go filing past, and I'm sitting on the floor in the dimly red-lit room and reach over to some nice people and do them, taking the cock deeply into my throat, so that Azak, the next day, says that my throat is quite irritated and that maybe I shouldn't do it anymore. I doubt it! He says I should hold off and he'd like to see my throat when it HASN'T been brutalized, Down to watch the dancing for a bit, but the dance floor is so crowded it's almost impossible to watch anyone. The sexy light black is back, dancing with his clothes on, and then stands upstairs with the brief-
DIARY 3755
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11. Reading the last of "Star Maker" on the way to work, but it's not quite as good as his first duet, and the mysticism doesn't work, particularly when he's left with the same ambivalent feelings about the Star Maker as he had when he started: and saying he HAD to admire him isn't saying anything. Work is hectic from 9 to 5:30, talking to Dror and to Anne Herrick, who's saying there has to be a separate translation sheet so that she can type easily, and I'm talking to Syva at length about my ideas, and then I have to leave at 5:30 to subway up to Azak's, which is in a rather tacky building, and he's painted the walls his favorite dull chocolate color, but it's like a big closet, and he takes from 6 to 7 with me, answering the phone a number of times, once from Joan, and when I get home there's a note from John saying that Joan CALLED, and said she'd gotten her finger smashed in a door and it might have to be CUT OFF, and she hung up in tears. I try to call her for the next few days, finally getting satisfaction from Louis Ponderoso's roommate that she's still alive and OK on Saturday (though Pat Burrell's moved back to AKRON, which is strange news). Decide to work while the last of the couscous is cooking, and he's left me QUANTITIES of it. Work from 8:10 to 8:25, and from 9:30 to 11:30, and again he's in bed, though reading his book on the Metropolitan, and I cuddle close to him as he reads, but again we're both sleepy, and though I insisted to Azak that I have been feeling UNDULY tired, I still haven't been very much interested in sex at ALL, and John, today, said that if I had something, I probably got it from HIM, and I woke in AGONY of cramps in my shins and calves and feet this night, just after Azak asked if I even had my hands or feet "tingle" as if they'd fallen asleep. I also said I had no scratching (after he said my arm blemishes were due to "folliciculitis" and pulled a long dark hair out of my ear which had been scratching on my eardrum, and charging me $35), but then my right ABDOMEN and my left SHIN began itching like crazy. Arranged to shit at his hospital on Monday morning, so they can test it: hot shit!
DIARY 3756
THURSDAY, APRIL 12. To work, after my first haircut in MANY months, from 8:45 to 5:30, making my week 32 hours with my day off tomorrow. David Rodman comes in about 9:45, and he's tall and shapely, with marvelously packed chest and pectorals under his tailored shirt, and a small but promising crotch in his tight red levis. His memory is phenomenal as he sits and recites characters, mathematics, proofs, phrases, examples, and explanations all morning at Syva, who tried to tear him apart. Vi Weiner just sits there with her round face and intelligent eyes and askew-parted hair, since she admits she doesn't know any mathematics and has to be given a detailed scenario by David. He says that he STILL wants to use me for scripts, and for 7 and 8, not just for the future Grade 1, and when I say I could do the 3-4 scripts a week he's asking for, he's happy. But tell him I'm pretty busy for the next few weeks, and he seems to think that's OK. He has an appointment with a writer at 1, so Syva and Vi and I go off to Greenstreet's when she says she'll put it on the expense account. We gossip merrily about David and the theater group on 13th across from EDI where Lois Eigen wandered in and hired half his staff, and Rodman amazes me when he says he has to do a score over the weekend, at International House, for Kei Takei! We have a rapport, and at one point, when Syva remarks about Personal Hygiene in the unit of Personal Finances, he says something about Size Queens that my mind may have invented, but there WAS a pause in the conversation after he said WHATEVER he said. He staggers through to 5:30, saying that he's really a night person, and couldn't POSSIBLY meet them before 1, and then brings it down to 11, and they hope to finish quickly tomorrow. I say some bright things and some stupid things, as does everyone except David, and he and Syva make a marvelous pair, and Ron and Barbara and Vi and I mainly sit around watching the two of them strike sparks together. Quite a day! I feel NOT AT ALL like Mattachine, so go home and have soupy dinner of the last of the couscous, washing dishes and working 7:55-9:50 and 10-11, when I get over to SLEEP without grass, wanting to be sharp tomorrow at waking at 7:15!
DIARY 3757
FRIDAY, APRIL 13. Wake at my usual 6:30 with the sun beaming in through the windows, turning off the alarm and taking my lunch, brought back from yesterday, with me. Get there on the stroke of 8:15, and Cynthia goes through her explanation with the same glee and gracefulness and charm as she did before, and the crowd looks formidable, especially the green-eye-shadowed Harriet, who looks like she could eat balls raw without blinking, and the current champion. There's a lovely thing of a special contest: the highest score for the two last ones yesterday and the first three today will get a weekend for two at the Sahara in Las Vegas PLUS all the money they can push through a hole in a shower enclosure in 60 seconds after they've been showered with $100,000 in $100s, $50, $20s, $10s, and $5s. The gal with the highest score is only at 450, and she's knocked out by Ted Tarson, who gets about $800, and then the next game he runs it up to $1240! I sweat through the first two games, which are quite exciting, and then go into Central Park to enjoy the flowering of the forsythia and the blooming of the trees and daffodils despite the demands of my bladder, eating my lunch from yesterday and breeze-dried cake with the icing indelibly imprinted on the aluminum foil. Back at 1:15 to piss and find I'm ON the third show, and we three know that ONE OF US is going to get that trip and that shower! Feel fairly calm, and the first question "All the News That's Fit to Print" gives me $170, since I only trusted myself with $45 on newspaper subjects. I go up and down, losing an auction to Ted for $160, and he MISSES Octavia as Nero's wife, and Art James ASKS me and I tell him. I breeze through "China" and "Agnes DeMille" for the choreographer of "Oklahoma" and I'm always at 50, always getting into auctions, some two, some three-way, and getting many, losing many, Guess Longfellow at a stab and Birmingham at a REAL stab, and All Saint's Day is a snap. But I don't know "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" connected with H.L. Mencken, say "Sanyo" rather than "Sony," and the cheese question, guessed with Naomi, really "Mary of Magdelen" is RIDICULOUS. But I'm up and up, having been
DIARY 3759
SATURDAY, APRIL 14. Up early again, working from 7:45 to 9:35, checking through some with John until he's too tired to do more, and then shower and shave and leave for 380 Madison, room 806, for a shot at "Where's the Action," and there are two other guys, one frowsy and cute, the other VERY cute, blond, in a heather turtleneck that showed off his proud pectorals and thick arms. We tried a few questions, and had a lot of fun, and then Dan Greenburg called me into the office (said "You're under arrest"), and said that it was so OBVIOUS that I was so winning and smiley and amiable and intelligent that he's give me the $5 for this, and $10 if I came BACK at 3:30 to do things for a PILOT FILMING on Thursday, sometime. I threw caution to the dogs and asked how much was in it for me, since I had to leave off a $7/hour freelance job, and he said it would be 3:30 at the EARLIEST, and might even be 6:30, and I'd get $50 for it. Fine. So he shook hands with me and I went off, smiling and feeling GREAT. Walk back to the subway, reading "War and Peace" all the way, and get home at noon to tell John the great news, and he shakes his head in amazement, and I work from 1 to 2:45, and then get off AGAIN for the studio, and this time we're in the bigger room and the room's filled with five gals who are all so bright, buoyant, vivacious, that the corners of your mouth ache with their smiling and your head reels with their snappy repartee. The two guys are rather plumpish and uninteresting, and then we're waiting for Stan, who arrives in a WINNING smile and beauty and a NICE crotch and BEAUTIFUL clothing at 3:40. So we're into the writer's room to look around at the source material for the show while we're put in groups of three to see whose reflex time is paired with whose. The first time around I get with the bleached blonde with the long black eyelashes and the crackle in her voice who's stoned, and she gets ALL the hits! Try another time and it's somewhat more even, but I still don't get my share, and only on the last round do I come through, though I'm probably on the slowest team. It's a good thing this ISN'T a contest, and sad I can't do it since I've DONE two.
DIARY 3763
SUNDAY, APRIL 15. Buy the Times before we get in, and read it before watching "The Visiting Angel" and "Bunraku" on TV from 10:30-11:30 (see notes on DIARY 3751). Finish the Times, then have lunch quickly (John's gone to another DTW Director's meeting) and FINALLY get down to doing my income tax. I'd told myself that I wouldn't leave it for the final day, but here it is, and that's when I'm doing it. Discover to my horror that I DON'T have the forms at ALL from New York City and New York State, AND I don't have all the schedules that I need from the Federal. Worry about it, debating being late, debating trying to find them somewhere, and then remember that John's done his, so I can at least use his as a FORM, and find that he HAS copies of Schedule C (for Capital Gains), which he hadn't used, so I can USE that, and then go the merry route of proving to myself AGAIN that I don't have to fill out very much in self-employment, because my rent took care of most of the FREELANCE work, and then the figures don't add up from the various places I worked, and, funny: I though I worked for Creative Book Services and Appleton-Century-Crofts, and my W-2s are from McGregor and Warner, and from TemPositions! Get everything together, bounce back and forth with figures, trying alternatives, and find that I CAN claim I sold my Listfax properly, AND the IBM at FREE, and STILL get most of the money back from the government. ALSO find out that with a VERY small income, I managed to live rather well, considering that I didn't have any spectacular vacations to support. Then have dinner and start typing, and try vainly to finish everything before 11, but that finds me only with 13 pages done, and I haven't finished all the special pages for yesterday, but I'm almost up to date and feel good about it. Worked on the dictionary from 8:15-9:40, and from 12-12:50, too, to round out the day. Very tired to bed, setting the alarm at 7 because I have to leave at 7:30 to get to Azak's at 8:30 in order to leave my stool to be examined, since I don't think that the consistency of my shit has been quite right since I got back from the trip, and I might have picked up something. No trouble sleeping.
DIARY 3764
MONDAY, APRIL 16. Up at 7 feeling gratifyingly like shitting, so I'll have no trouble when I get there, and get to the West Side IRT and go smoothly all the way up to 135th, getting there in only 40 minutes, just as Azak's walking into the lobby at 8:10. He gives me a little plastic cup and shows me to the male's lockers, and I deposit my black stool in it, and he immediately suggests that it looks like it has dried blood in it: obviously I have a bleeding ulcer. I've been hit by him like this before, so it doesn't really phase me. Then he tries to take more blood, since he says that all my liver functions look bad and he wants to try again, and I look in the other direction and he jabs the left arm, there's a pause, and he says "My dear, that's only the second time that happened," and he missed my vein, so prominent that he always exclaims about it. So I roll up the other sleeve and he hits me there, properly, and I have two bandages on my arms. THEN he wants my finger pricked, and calls in some doctor that he says has an enormously fat cock, and he comes in with his robe on, so I can't see anything. Then we sit around talking over coffee, and he's bitching that Henry Messer is NOT the head of Neurosurgery, and I said I didn't think he said he WAS, but it really didn't matter. Then someone came in with some stomach brushings, which isn't usually done, and Azak played with the microscope and then said "Frankly, I haven't the slightest idea what I'm looking at." Admirable candor, but poor doctor-side manner. Then he suggests the other fellow do a study for him, and when he leaves says that now Azak has to kiss HIS ass, unpleasant as THAT is. We have coffee, artificial, since he says he's been off it, and now feels MARVELOUS. I worry about John. Then leave at 9:45, subway up to the transfer point, then subway down to work at 10:30, working till 3:30 by checking camera copy on about 15 units that have been returned, then leave to watch Part I of "War and Peace," American Version, eat promptly at 6, work 6:35-8, watch the Paul McCartney special with a GREAT half-boy, half-girl dance number and other good effects, work 9:05-10:30, do dishes, then 10:50-11:30, and bed exhausted.
DIARY 3765
TUESDAY, APRIL 17. Can't quite make it to work before 9:15, still feeling tired, and John's out of bed before me. There's more camera copy to check, but then nothing to do so I start working on the flow of the manuscript through the house, talking with people to find out what happens, but no one who really knows is talking to me yet, so it's just what I can get from the various old boards and memos and shelves. Again Scrabble at lunch, and I'm doing better than I expcected against Ron, winning many more games than I lose, and leave AGAIN at 3:30, pleading the pressure of the dictionary proofreading, since it just MUST be done by the next two weeks, and subway home to watch part II of "War and Peace," and somehow, having read part of the book, it seems VERY sketchy, and Henry Fonda is just not at ALL right as Pierre, and though Mel Ferrer is pretty to LOOK at, he just is NOT a very good actor, running the gamut of expressions from soulful to soulful. Work from 6-6:10 until we have dinner, and then, as usual, John and I talk for a long time, and then I get to work from 6:55 to 9:15, then do the dishes and work from 9:30 to 10, when I get across the way to watch the special about St. Peter's. Everyone is very silky and soupy about the narrative, which seems to have been taken from the Bible and personal letters of just about everyone, and a very bleary Orson Welles staggers around under his own weight and the weight of a very black cape being Michaelangelo Buonarotti, talking about the loves he has, and how he feels like a woman and no one understands him. Strong stuff. John missed most of the good scenes, but he comes in to see part of it, and I think there might be a chance to have sex, but he says he's tired (see DIARY 3789), so he goes to bed and I stay up and get out the pornography, hiding a cache under the Indian books for easy reference, and come with gusto, since it's been such a long time since I've come. I rather LIKE doing it myself, but it seems to say something bad about the relationship that we SELDOM seem to have sex anymore. When we DO, we enjoy it, but it's just so SELDOM. I suspect he's jerking off, too, which adds to the sadness: why can't we get TOGETHER and do it?
DIARY 3766
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18. [24 days behind, and the feeling of desperation about catching up HAS to get easier, because if it got any harder, I'd fear NEVER being able to catch up.] Wake early and get over to work at 7:30, going over many of the pages with John, and working until 9:30, then put in a day's work from 10 to 3:45, during which I talk over the scheduling map I'm working on with Dror and Barbara, and it seems to be teaching Barbara what the system is, and telling ME what I have to know to operate in it. Leave at 3:45 to get back to the last chapter of "War and Peace" on TV from 4:30 to 6, and then before dinner I really can't stand it, so during intermissions I do the dusting of the back apartment, and then after dinner vacuum the rugs, since they're just so fluffy and messed up that I can't take it anymore [and at THIS point they're in the same state, so some things I repeat and repeat.] Then watch the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe on TV, discouraged because I can't find the program from the troupe so that I can see what they show on TV. Copy down the order that they do things in, and merely the fact that they put the Lion Dance in the middle and don't show the Magician on TV shows that SOME things were changed around. The order on the TV show was (1) Plate spinning, (2) Long pole feats, (3) Trick cycling, (4) Flowery sticks, (5) Wushu acrobats, (6) Foot dexterity, (7) Lion Dance, (8) Diabolos, (9) Pagoda of Chairs, and then they announced an intermission. (10) Roller balance and 5-6 bowl juggle, (11) Pagoda of Bowls, (12) Hoop diving, and (13) finale. The hoop diving didn't give the impression of little animals on TV, there was a jump of camera angles JUST at the moment the riders on the bicycle fanned into their greatest splendor, which cut down the glory of the effect, and some of the cutting back and forth with cameras made some of the BEAUTY much less apparent, so in all the TV version was NOT a very good one, though the audience still had to break into applause every few minutes so that even John remarked about it. Worked on dictionary 7:30-8:30, and not after, so me MIGHT have smoked and had sex after the 10 pm ending of the Acrobats. Who knows, now?
DIARY 3767
THURSDAY, APRIL 19. Work 8:30 to 3:15, only taking a half-hour for lunch, but Susan had come into town this afternoon, and we went out for lunch at Once Upon a Stove, which took a long time to serve us, and she had the APPETIZER of the stuffed clams and a salad while I went through a very tasty ham and asparagus omelet, joking to her, as it DID come true, that my urine had a characteristic smell for the next few days. Phoned her and Arnie to invite them to the taping this afternoon, and then went back to work to have hassles over the coin units, making sure that everything had to be full-size preprints to make the coins look the LEAST bit believable. Then left work and walked up to the studios, finding myself SO late in getting there at 3:30 that I took a TAXI up Madison, for the first time in ages, spending $1.25 for a ride not quite to 5th, when I leaped out of the taxi stopped for a light and dashed up the rest of the way, running into the handsome one, who was going to blame ME for his lateness. Up to the 8th floor (or whatever the right floor was) and there's Cynthia waiting for us. Into a tiny mirrored dressing room, and there are three woman and us two guys, and it's obvious that they're going to have one of the women and one of the men as standbys, and I fear all along that they're going to choose the actor in preference to the content editor, and they do. But everyone is MADE up, nevertheless, and I look somewhat better than I did before, though the complete absence of darkness around my eyes is somewhat strange. Out to the set for a very disconcerted explanation of the mechanics of the game by Assistant Producer John Rhinehart, while workmen finish buffering the floor and putting in the last bulbs in the money windows, and when one bulb blew, it looked like it might be the LAST one around, and I couldn't figure out this typical last-minute rush for something that had been in planning for MONTHS. Back to the dressing room to listen to the "former winner" talk about her lovers and children, listen to the woman standby talk about her 10-year-old daughter called sister to her 16-year-old appearance, and the OTHER woman turned out later to be a college friend
DIARY 3771
FRIDAY, APRIL 20. Worked on the dictionary all day. From getting home at 2, I didn't get up until 8, but started from 8 to 10, when I stopped to have breakfast, then 10:10 to 11:45, when I washed the dishes from last night, from 12 to 2, when I had lunch, reading more of "War and Peace," and then from 2:40 to 4, when I talked to John from his coming home from work, and from 4:25 to 5:30, when I finished for dinner. Because of leaving early in the afternoons and not working today, I only worked 21¼ hours at work, which is poor for unemployment, since it's under the $150 I need as an average for the maximum payment of $75 a week, but not by much. Counting each page as I finish, can't WAIT to get through with the dictionary, can't imagine the luxury of having nothing to DO but indulge myself. Home for dinner and then out to DTW for the first of two loft-dance programs, which, since there's nothing MORE to talk about about today, I'll start in on early. "Rope(+2)," choreography by Frances Alenikoff, consisted of Kevin O'Meara getting a chance to show off his large-titted chest and FABULOUS arms and shoulders in an acrobat's suit while he did turns and sits and flips on a fairly stationary trapeze, while Wendy Perron did tight little turns and skips about on the floor below. For a BIT there was an air of menace about the piece, but there seemed to be no POINT to the work, and my dislike of Frances Alenikoff made it very easy to dislike the piece, much as I enjoyed Kevin's body. It's so sad to know that he's straight, because I'd love to just LOOK at it, but feel guilty about doing it, and he feels guilty about being LOOKED AT by me---not wanting to feel good, I postulate, because it would be like admitting to a homosexual feeling WITH me. "The Black" by John Wilson, danced by Wendy Summit, isn't as good as John indicated it would be, and her "black-dancing" isn't THAT funny that the audience should think it SO funny. The SITUATION is rather sad and the black ape-man mask that John wore was really quite pathetic. After intermission came "Solo" by Peggy Cicierska, and by John's usual obtuseness, I asked "Is that her?" for the gal standing in front, and he said YES for the girl standing in BACK.
DIARY 3773
SATURDAY, APRIL 21. Work on the dictionary from 8:25 am to 10:35, when I stopped for breakfast and a bit of shopping, then from 11:35 to 12:45 when I had lunch, and then from 1:10 to 4:50, making the grand total number of hours of work on the dictionary this week 26 hours and 50 minutes, which was longer than I worked at Appleton! A total of 48 hours working this week. Then I shower and we get out to eat at the Szechuan Gardens, for another one of our restaurants, and the food that John orders is very hot, as well as being impossibly skin-and-bone-y (Smashed Chicken in hot sauce), but the vegetables are very tasty, though over-laden with ginger. I have the moo-shu pork, paying 15¢ apiece for two extra pancakes, which come out cold and hard, and they don't really taste very good either, so I just finish the rest of the pork and the quantity of scrambled egg with my chopsticks. Lot of kids around, but they don't bother me so much here. Then, ridiculously early, we're out of the restaurant and wander around Chinatown while John looks for a gift to give to Kei Takei. We get into a bakery where we get some almond cookies (dry and tasteless) for ourselves for dessert and a HUGE goldfish cookie for Kei. Then into the car about 7 and drive to International House, which John thought was the Interfaith Center, and we're worried that Claude Underwood, who's coming along, will get lost, but he's there in the lobby ALREADY, and he and John sit and talk for about an hour before the performance starts at 8:45, and I talk to Alice and Joan, who give me the Us and part of the Vs in the car after the performance, and one of Joan's sisters, the one who seemed to be so taken with me at the Cubiculo, and then finally the door's open and there's Kei, limping on one foot with a crutch under her arm, leading us all into the auditorium. We've been told we can move around, so I take a front-center seat for the beginning, then move to the side when things will look better from there, and then to stand in the back, looking over the performers AND audience, for the end of the hour, when things get rather boring. This is LIGHT, part 7, and it seems Kei's been concerned about all the reviews saying that she's
DIARY 3775
SUNDAY, APRIL 22. Wake on a bright Easter Sunday morning to have a fantastic sex session with much necking and kissing and bodily affection, making us AGAIN realize what fabulous sex partners we have in each other, seeming to re-cement the relationship with the reminder of our luck to have found ourselves with one another. Then over to work on the dictionary after finishing up with the rest of the Times, working from 8:50 to 12:30, then over to watch an uncut, uninterrupted two hour filming of C.B. DeMille's 1927 silent version of "King of Kings" with the singularly unsexy H.B. Warner as a bit-too-old Christ. Then work from 2:45 to 3:20, and back to the CBS Sports Spectacular with the weightlifting finals, interested to compute that the 114-pounder lifted 2.41 times his weight with a lift of 295 pounds, a 132-pounder did even better with a world's record lift of 348 for 2.63 times his body weight, but that the 198-pounder only lifted a world's record of 468 pounds for a 2.36 times his body weight. Then back to work at 5 and work to 6:05, when we postpone dinner until after coming back, and get to the 7 pm showing of the second loft dance. "Headquarters" is Art Bauman's clothesline piece with Jim Barry's 007 music with the Mays dancing, and they don't have quite the antic franticness of Anthony LaGiglia and Barbara Roan that I saw before, but they're marvelously attractive dancers nonetheless. "One Space, One Figure and Occasional Sounds" turns me off as a TITLE for Tina Croll's choreography, sound, and performance, and I write on the program "What do you do when a well-meaning baby hands you a fresh turd?" John gets very up-tight by this, saying that it might make a good journalistic quip, but it say nothing about what I SAW. I saw a very attractive woman with very little dance skills in evidence changing speeds and motions across the room, with a look of intent on her face as if she were making it all up as she went along, or as if she were so determined to recreate something in her mind that she had absolutely no contact with the audience at all, as if masturbating by herself in her own head. I found her athleticism narcissistic and her quirks exasperating,
DIARY 3782
MONDAY, APRIL 23. Up without an echo of the sex yesterday morning, and work on the final revision of scheduling for Grades 7 and 8 with Ginny Croft, Syva decides to wait to see the rate of manuscript in from EDI before coming up with a final schedule, and I type the final flow of the manuscript. Work from 8:45 am to 3:15, when I take off to see "Dumbo" and "The World's Greatest Athlete" at the tiny and incredible popcorny Quad 3 Cinema with kids shouting all over the place. "Dumbo" has a black-song (by blackbirds) about "truckin"---as "I even seen a vegetable TRUCK," and a MARVELOUS champagne-bucket fantasy which MUST have been grass inspired, with pink and blue and purple elephants blowing each other out of their trunks and eyes melding into elephants and people and parades and a cacophony of sound and colors and images that have GOT to be grass-inspired. The French guy for the athlete is so sinewy that he's hardly sexy, shows NOTHING of a box, and though he's blue-eyed and attractive in the close-ups, there's nothing REALLY sexy to watch. Home to dinner and watch the first part of "Myshkin" by John Eaton on TV, modern as all get-out, but when he's describing the plot, they're showing the pieces of the opera, and by the time he's been through the whole thing I'm ALREADY bored with it, so I get to work from 8:20 to 8:55, when I go BACK to see if the new IBM-sponsored "Don Quixote" with Rex Harrison is any good, and I keep thinking of the music, so I don't think it's good, though I DO resolve to read the book, and get BACK at 9:25 to 10:40, when I'm over to say goodnight to John, and verify that "Richard III' DOES go on at 11:30, instead of the 11 in the TV section, and work from 11:05 to 11:30 and then over to watch the color movie of excellent-faced Lawrence Olivier acting with lots of tight-body-stockinged actors with good legs that he seems to surround himself with, and Clair Bloom didn't really manage to make the female lead convincing, though Maurice Evans did rather well as the simpering brother. There surely is some strong personal language in the play, though. It's over about 2, and I jerk off again, sheer desperation, and fall into bed.
DIARY 3783
TUESDAY, APRIL 24. Work from 8:45 to 6:15, making it a nine-hour day to somewhat make up for the six-hour day yesterday, and it's a fun day at work. Anne Harris calls and says that I've specified a "Commutative Law" song, but there isn't any, so I write one to the tune of "Here we go round the Mulberry Bush" and take it down, but a bit later Anne calls up and says there's another tape of a 12-string guitar version with the EDI chorus and orchestra, and I get down to hear it and decide the final two verses have to go, and they don't use mine ANYWAY. Then transcribe a commercial that they don't have any script for, check with Anne Herrick about the sample pages, which she's done most of, study math modules to see what was done in the past, and four NEW units have come in for me to look at, and the vocabulary translation list hassle comes up, and I go through the units we have to make a complete vocabulary list for starters (which turns out to be useless---but it kept me busy). Then to Azak's at 6:30 for the results of my tests, in which everything comes out positive, and he gives me some Librium, which he insists goes VERY highly with grass, but says that that's not the way I should take them, and then gives some other pills for my bowel problems, saying that I should cut down on the raw vegetables in the salads and see what happens to my feces then. I still have trays full of vegetables to use up, so I have salads the same way for the next week and a half, and then go down to just tuna fish, which is pretty awful, and my bowels seems to have come back to some kind of normal, except latterly they seem to be bleeding, probably because I'm back up to the third level of exercising again (just think, it used to be OK until the 5TH level!). Home about 8:30 and have dinner and do dishes in time to watch the start of Ingmar Bergman's "The Lie," but a "comedy of banality" doesn't appeal to me, and I decide to go off to Man's Country, since I won't be able to try the Wednesday play tomorrow, and get there at 10 to a four-people line, and it's not the best night in the world (see next page). Home at 1:30 and get out the pornography to come myself, and I'm very much happier with Man's Country.
DIARY 3785
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25. Work from 8:45 to 4:30, starting off by retyping the vocabulary list, but by the time that's finished, and I've cleaned up my desk, and looked at a few MORE of the units that have come in, and heard there are going to be meetings for the rest of the week about the schedule, even I have nothing left to do, and decide to bring in the rest of the work to finish it AT WORK tomorrow and the next day. Leave at 4:30 to get to Dr. Thomas Kellie's office on 110 Remsen Street at 5, and get back to have some drops put into my eyes to measure the curvature of the ball, and it turns out that my glasses HAVE been out of focus, and my right eye has needed an increased lens strength of a couple of diopters. I ask about my contacts and he says I should put them in, but comes in JUST as I try to feel for my eyeball and can't feel anything, saying that the anesthetic might make it harder. The contacts have only changed by half a diopter, so he says that since I use them so seldom, it wouldn't be worth it to get another set. So he gives me a prescription, and tells me to go around the corner to Hoecker on Joralemon, and get around JUST as they're closing at 5:30, but he measures me up quickly and says it's going to be $24 more than the $10 I have to leave on deposit. So much for THAT money. Home just at 6 for dinner, hurry with the dishes, and get out to the Canadian Ballet's production of "The Sleeping Beauty" with Rudolf Nureyev and Karen Kain as a ballerina so young she lends a new suspense to the four-turnaround scene: will the orchestra run out of breath before she makes her final turn, and can the conductor slow down the beat enough to prevent her from finishing her final turn to dead silence? It seems that Nureyev doesn't care for her at all, and his coldness to her is most unpleasant, particularly when it almost seems that he's TRYING to make her look bad. The scenery and costumes by Nicholas Georgiadis are vastly different: the scenery looks like it's old stuff left over from other productions which won't bear up under bright lighting, so they tactfully leave it dark. There's a great twisting Swan Boat through fog for the castle, but his searching through the whole place
DIARY 3787
THURSDAY, APRIL 26. Get to work from 8:45 to 5:45, with a half hour marked for lunch, but as usual I play Scrabble with Ron, and it takes at LEAST half an hour. I've surprised him with words like tondo and daddo (which was only dado in the dictionary), and teil turned out to be a Chinese unit of measure, not the root of entail, as I'd thought. But he'd not challenge me, and that's his problem. The score, finally, stands about 3 or 4 to 1 for my side, though sometimes he succeeds in putting down 50-pointers with all seven letters (or Bingoes as he calls them), and the bearded guy comes in every so often to kibitz. So I bill the COMPANY 8½ hours, which at $7 an hour is $59.50, and I work on the DICTIONARY from 8:55 to 12:55, when I have lunch, and from 2:25 to 5:25, with a bit of work after the game, for 7 hours at the FINAL rate of $7 an hour, with is $49, so for that ONE day's work I made $108.50---and I LIKE a rate of $14 an hour! Again I cut out of Mattachine, so I've only been in ONE night this month, and get home to dinner, look at the mail, and in general waste time until I push myself to get something done, and sort out the mail list and do some of the easy things: mail six letters away for stamps to Mauritius, Ivory Coast, Nigeria (which comes back with a METER stamp, drat), Dahomey, Senegal, and somewhere else that I don't remember, about various informations about freight shippings, write to the Times travel section for their booklet on how to write for them, to the Science-Fiction Book Club (which turns out to be too late, they've already mailed out the books, so I have a Norton book I didn't order, but it's only $11.49 and I now have ORDERED the four I have to get, so I can QUIT anytime---hopefully BEFORE the trip!) and send the ballet ticket to Azak. John's out to some dance performance, which he seems addicted to of late, except that on occasion he goes to the trucks or the Elgin instead, and I probably stayed up AGAIN after he went to bed, to jerk off slowly and with elegance, sometimes recording all sorts of VERY strange observations which I keep the pad beside the telephone for, and the best pornography right under the India book under the telephone stand. Neat!
DIARY 3788
FRIDAY, APRIL 27. Worked with John from 7:30 to 8:30, clearing up almost the last batch, and I'd hoped to finish the Vs through Zs today, but things came up at work, probably the units on the coins again, and the translations on the units with SUM, PLUS, and the months of the year and the days of the week, so there were conversations and things to work out. Also, one of these days the four of us went to look for the Izmir, and found it changed (after we went down to Third Avenue unnecessarily) to the Bosporus on Lexington, but it wasn't very good, sadly; though the things SOUNDED good, they didn't TASTE that good. To work from 9 to 4, making a work week of 37¼ hours, and leave in order to get up in the DRIVING rain to Crebos to say hello to everyone, get two books on Computer Programming from Betsy to copy their indexes, get the xerox of the McGraw-Hill guide to indexing, and tell her that I talked with Janet Mais, who couldn't understand why I could charge as little as 15¢ per item, no matter HOW I counted items, and she said she'd be willing to pay $275 for the job, which comes out to $1 a page. Also, she knows how many lines she wants, so it's great. We chat for a bit, and I talk to Hank about how I'm NOT surprised about the Watergate mess, and then I'm OUT in the rain again, getting shoes very wet, wet inside from sweating, and home with everything in my briefcase, and dry out. John's out again, I JUST don't feel like working, so I decide to "relax" by seeing what it DOES feel like to have Librium with grass, so I take the Librium, two of them, and smoke, and feel quite light-headed and not at all sexy. Smoke some bidi and get sort of aroused, and look through the pornography for a couple of hours, playing listlessly with myself, and decide about 10 that I'd better get going or I'll never finish by the time John gets back, and the constant thought of his coming back WHILE I'm playing is still there. I put music on and try everything to get myself excited, and finally manage to come unsatisfactorily, and feeling rather poorly about it, except that I clean things up and put on the earphones, and decide to write down some thoughts that come to me (see next page). John's in and to bed at 11.
DIARY 3790
SATURDAY, APRIL 28. Up at 7:30, feeling awful, but determined to finish the dictionary, and work from 7:45 to 10, then have breakfast, then from 10:10 to 1, and have lunch, and 1:30 to 5:30, which is the END of it, except for the six pages of abbreviations that Joan and Alice haven't managed to finish yet, which they'll give me Monday, and I even go over it with JOHN so that he has the whole weekend to work on the answers, and I've done over 8 hours, and look through to find that I can keep my rate ABOVE 3 galleys per hour, only barely, but much less than the 4/hour which would be expected of ORDINARY galleys, and would then be able to bill 246 hours, for a total of $984 in all for the dictionary, and since I billed 80 hours before, I bill 166 now, for a final bill of $644, which I give to John on Monday to give to Carol Sims on Tuesday, May 1, which is the final day for the book. Carol's hired someone ELSE to do some reading to ensure that all markings are legible for the printer, and John later finds that she's been changing things, and he demands that they be changed back, and he's STILL in charge, even to putting the date BACK onto his introduction (of 1971) which Carol had removed. It feels SOO good to be finished (except for the 6 pages), and I really won't know what to do with the time. Worked 60 hours this week, and I hope I don't have too many like them, because I'm really punchy with the work. My glasses are hurting the corners of my ears, too, because they fit too tightly, but I don't have sore eyes anymore. Sort through the ads that I clipped out of last Sunday's travel section about the trip, and send off 10 of them, along with a considerable letter to Mom, saying that I'll be sending her my watch when I get it from the quiz show, and a letter to Bill, and set up a schedule for getting out letters, feeling good that I'm finally catching up, but just in time for ANOTHER trip, which will take time to catch up from and it's an unending cycle, though I'm never in the same place twice. John's back from his performance, we talk for a bit and then get to bed, and I'm all ready for the month of May, and John's STILL not heard about the University job!
DIARY 3791
SUNDAY, APRIL 29. See by my work calendar (which turned out to be an EXCELLENT idea) that THIS IS THE ONLY DAY IN THE ENTIRE MONTH OF APRIL IN WHICH I DIDN'T WORK! Up to read the Times, then at 10 we're out in the car to get up to Sheldon, Connecticut, and by happenstance get off at the right exit and drive right up to the house at 12. They said they'd wanted to call us, because there were other relatives coming over that day, too, but they were happy to see us all. Talked about our trip to India, and they talked about our NOT wanting, really, to spend the whole vacation in Switzerland, but in Rotterdam and Neuschwanstein and various other picturesque places in Austria and Germany RATHER than in Switzerland. Interesting! About this time John decides that we can spend 4 weeks there traveling around, which is nice, too. Then the relatives come in, and we laugh about the eating and drinking habits, sit down to a glorious meal of so-so turkey but GREAT baked potatoes with a thick burnt skin, cream-sauced girasol, misnamed Jerusalem artichokes, which have a great flavor between a nut and a water chestnut, and then a tart rhubarb pie and a good pumpkin pie. Coffee, and then out to look over the grounds with Arthur, showing us the boat rack and the barn and the potato cellars and where they find all the arrowheads, and then we talk again to the people and leave about 4, thanking them very much for all the information about getting cars, too, and back here at 6, where I decide to get back to letters after I can stand to type only 6 pages: but only get up to April 17, which is awful, though I plan to do a lot tomorrow. Watch the program about the 41 French masterpieces in D.C., and figure they're good enough for me to see, and then watch Joan Sutherland in an AWFUL "Who's Afraid of Opera" with a truly castrated "Faust." Then write letters to Elaine, Arthur Mitchell, Cyndy, Laird, and Grandma, telling them all to watch me on TV on Friday, and three others in bills and ads for 8 in all, and all I have LEFT to do are the ones overseas for the trip, which finally seems to be settled firmly on leaving the weekend of June 8, so I can write for people and places from friends in Europe.
DIARY 3792
MONDAY, APRIL 30. Get to work from 9:30 to 5:15, but two hours in that time, from 10:15 to 12:15, were spent in going over the last six galleys of the dictionary, the rest in reading 7 units, and after dinner get to John to finish going over them from 6:50 to 7:50, and since he agrees with everything I say, there isn't anything for him to check, and he's all ready to take everything in RIGHT on schedule on May 1, though he says he'll be surprised if the book comes out much before February. For the second straight week, he predicts he'll hear the answer about Washington this week, but even at THIS date, 5/13, we don't know, though we're BOTH firm in thinking that it will be NO. Then, sadly, get IMMEDIATELY to work on the index, having taken the time at work to xerox the two indexes from the book and a copy of the McGraw-Hill write-up (none too soon, since two weeks later the xerox machine was removed for "more efficient service"), and then take the books BACK to Betsy Feist at Crebos when she says it's OK after 5:30. Work on the index from 9:15 to 10:45, and then from 11-11:30, and it seems to be going very well, though the first few counts I take tell me that I'll have to pad the index with a great number of subentries. It's great that I know the field so well, because I can almost TELL what items will be going in, in fact at one point I even sift through the other two indices to find what headings may possibly appear in the listing for this book, and then start going through for the SECOND time, up to the first 114 pages before getting into FORTRAN in specific, and things go very well through the whole thing. I tried keeping it on sheets of paper for this one, but the retyping WAS a chore, so I'll try it on cards the next time to compare. Claudia sends a letter, airmail, saying she saw me on "To Tell the Truth," so I send off a letter to her, even taking it to the post office at 9 to mail it, saying to watch me on Friday, along with my check and three bills, making five items in all, not quite in keeping with my schedule, but I haven't done ANY diary, and I'm still WAY behind in writing, and things are AGAIN beginning to pile up on my desk waiting the completion of the INDEX. Things are just NEVER caught up!
DIARY 3793
TUESDAY, MAY 1. [MAY AT LAST!] [Only 12 days behind, just HALF the number behind that I was YESTERDAY when I started to catch up!] To work from 9:15 to 5:45, making lots of phone calls, working from 9:45-10:45 on the index, working with lots of camera copy, and then at the end of the afternoon Syva calls Ron and me down to the 8th floor to help her fill up Math Achiever boxes to see if a too-long box can't be replaced by a storage box, which it can, and it's a relief to see Ron doing something except read the junky paperbacks that he's been immersed in for the past two weeks. Barry's taking up increasing amount of time with complaining about my not listening to his corrections, and Alice is getting in her zings, too, but she's much more reasonable. A check with Ginny Croft tells me that I'm doing very well: if anything, she's leaving some of the things I let go by, but I should continue to let them go by: it's HER job to do what she's doing, though Barry gives the opinion that she's thoroughly sick of her job, and in fact she's been LOOKING dreadful lately, though she talks with glee about her new apartment, only one block from her old, in the East 80's, and John's starting to look for someone to stay in OUR place while WE'RE gone. Home with the intention to get to Man's Country, and John is going to the Metropolitan Theater on 14th, so we're both busy tonight. I decide that this will be the turning point: it's just been too busy, I want to try Wednesday, but keep having ballets and orgies that night, but if I don't find it VERY good tonight, I'll just cut out Tuesdays completely. Over at 8 to find a LONG line of blacks, and there's a fuss at the door with the black doorman giving them hell for floating sheets and towels in the pool on last Tuesday, and that sheets are to remain ON THE BEDS, and not be used for turbans and sarongs on the dance floor. I guess I missed something by staying in the room. Up and find there's nothing interesting in the orgy rooms, and cruise past the rooms to find a somewhat older fellow playing with himself, and go in and do him, and he GIVES me the room, saying something like "You earned it," which I find amusing and probably TRUE. Then
DIARY 3796
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2. Get to work at 8:30 in order to get completely ready for the trip out to Glen Cove at 9, and ride down in the elevator with Sally to find that I left the jacket that I borrowed from John for Ron hanging in back of the door. Back up and down at 9:05, and then we weave through East Side streets trying to find the entrance to the Queens tunnel, and I say that it's going to take about an hour and a half, and because of poor direction, it does, though we're shunted through side streets in the suburbs, leading me to write the following note: "Again, in Roslyn and East Hills, the UNFAIRNESS of idle rich against working poor. How DOES poor roadman feel to see someone ESSENTIALLY like him tootling past in a Rolls?" "Fences made of SOLID lines of SAPLINGS in this part of the country!" "And the rich get FLOWERS and grass and clean air, too!" The tulips were out, the forsythia just finishing, and some of the trimmed boxy azaleas were in bloom, and the air was crisp and clear as the matrons came back from the beauty shoppe appointments, leaving their cars in the front of their houses, going toward home with faces worried about all the things they had to do, not SEEING what they had that others didn't. To the school and into the first classroom, to be told that the students were used to observers, and I established a nice rapport, I thought, by asking first "May I listen in?" and then "Thank you." But, like the Puerto Ricans during the census, it was no use asking them what they PREFERRED, since they could only say they liked what they had, or even given alternatives (lessons with stories, without stories / working on the tape, working in the book) saying they liked both equally. And surely they had no suggestions for improvement. But the teacher did, and I was favorably impressed with her interest in the program, and the number of suggestions she had to improving the system, some of them obvious even to me. At 12:15 we went out for lunch, after a lengthy discussion about where we'd eat, and finally ended up at a Chinese place where I had pork which was quite bland, so I kept pouring soy sauce over it, and there wasn't enough time to eat, so we didn't even have dessert, stopping later,
DIARY 3799
THURSDAY, MAY 3. Exercising again, though my stools show blood when I get to the third level, which is REALLY too bad. So I'm later to work, even though it takes me literally no time to make my lunch of just tuna. To work from 9 to 5:30, checking camera copy, and start work on the rewriting of the unit on Proportion, since the electrical resistance is a poor choice of topic, and I think of wassail, for which I get a recipe from John, and the unit will actually have a POINT. Back and have dinner and wash dishes and settle in for an evening of television while John's out again, and I find that I've SEEN most of what's being shown, so it's rather a bore, and add to that the fact that it's fundraising time for the Channel 13 people, so the intermissions are filled with pleadings for money. Watch "The Blacksmith" with Buster Keaton, wherein he blackens a beautiful white horse and wrecks a new car, and "The Cure" with Charlie Chaplin, one of his classics with the drunk scene from the whiskeyed waters, and the revolving door sequence too, and his gay winks at the fat villain's approaches to the girl behind him. The new one of the evening "His Royal Slyness" in which he's a look-alike to a king from a country who wants to marry someone else, but happily HE falls in love with his Princess Charming, and it's all very predictable, but it's nice to see him back in 1919 when he was young enough to CARRY OFF his tight trousers and frantic looks. Then Harry Langdon in "Saturday Afternoon" where he dates two cuties to the disgust of his wife, and then "The Aerial Wire" with Pearl White, which has her rescued by swimming up a chimney from a water-filler cellar, and falling into the water when the wire she's climbing across is cut. Then "Comrades" shows Mack Sennett as a tramp and his friend impersonating a figure of royalty to invade a family, and he surely had a CRUEL streak in him! And the last was "The Golf Specialist" with W.C. Fields, many gold clubs, a dizzy caddy, flypaper, and pie plates and other shenanigans. This is over at 11, and John's in bed already, so I crawl in beside him, then up to smoke and come, as usual, wishing there were some OTHER way to come off!
DIARY 3800
FRIDAY, MAY 4. Up at 7:15 to get ready for the class at Hunter, and though the subway crowds are ENORMOUS at the 7th Ave-Lex Ave interchange at Fulton Street, I still get there a few minutes ahead of time, to sit in the class and read a bit after getting sent back there by Mary Lefkarides, and then we talk for a bit until 9:10 when the last of her students arrive, and then I get started on one of the most successful single talks of the Mattachine engagements (see next page). Out at 11, after getting as many of them as I can to watch me on TV at 12:30, and subway home at 11:45, thinking I have lots of time to work on the quiche lorraine that John has the ingredients for, and called Elizabeth to make sure she doesn't eat lunch before she comes over, but with all the frying and mixing and grating and baking of piecrust and chopping of cheese to be done, it's obvious that I'd better WAIT until 12:30 to put it into the oven, turn it down at 12:45, and then serve it at 12:45. Elizabeth's in only minutes before hand, and we're over watching it after I pour the liquid in and see to my chagrin that there's much more liquid than will fit the piecrust! Had cleaned up the place beforehand, so that John couldn't accuse me of being a sloppy cook, even though I DID use two measuring cups. The program tells me some questions I'd forgotten (see following page), and Mary calls to say what the class reaction to Bob Burdick was, lecturing and fairly boring, but effecting an attitude change nonetheless. We have the quiche and wine, and John's short with Elizabeth, finding her, he says, a bit boring to talk with, and I get out about 1:45, getting to work at 2:30, and immediately being confronted with all the food, which they then move into the art department. Party starts at 3, lots of champagne and apples and nuts and grapes and orange wedges, and I talk with Alice and Ginny's assistant, and leave at 4:30, somewhere on the subway FINISHING the first volume of "War and Peace" and starting on the second one, and I've worked 33-3/4 hours this week. Home to dinner and feeling VERY good from the wine, and do I don't KNOW what until "Steambath" at 10-11:30, and the apotheosis, and God Himself, isn't as good as the STAGE production was. Come again, probably, at 11:30-1, and bed.
DIARY 3804
SATURDAY, MAY 5. Tired, so I get up fairly late, and don't start to work until 9:05 on the end of the index, working through until 12:25, and then from 1 to 6, taking far more time than I thought I'd need, 30 hours, but it looks GREAT, and it's STILL over $9 an hour, though not quite the $10 I'd thought it might be. At LAST everything at work was out of the way, but the weekend and the week ahead were filling up---no I STILL wasn't finished, since I worked all day MONDAY on it---and I desperately wanted to get to the diary, which I feared was slipping away for all time, and I kept getting letters from Claudia and Peter Schaffer and Paul, saying "Why is it we've never heard from you?" and even WORSE were getting no letters at ALL from Edgardo and Mom and Rita, who were obviously disowning me. Go to Barbara Roan, with John, for the second time, to ATL after dinner for "The Continuing Dance Exchange" and "True Spirits" and I'll start now since there's nothing else to do. The first half was marvelous, melding one person after another into the patterns across the floor, and the slim black in front of me hugged his elbows to his body and repressed a giggle of delight at some of the marvelous hand and arm motions of the beautiful Barbara Roan. John said he wished he could identify the source of her charisma, and I said it was the way she LOOKED at the audience, since when her back was to it, I was unpleasantly aware of her muscularity and the back of her head wasn't nearly as magnetic as her large eyes or her smiling mouth. Her flair for costuming was evident in her white, then blue, pants with halter that looked very romantic. Then when Anthony La Giglia came out in tails to escort some of the other ladies, it was too much, and they waltzed and polkaed across the floor. There was a good duet with Billy Siegenfeld and Irene Feigenheimer (what a DOUBLE!) of "Especially" with nickelodeon music and many different, all funny, dancing styles, and the audience was in raptures over the first half, and fell through their seats during the second half. During intermission I stayed away from everyone, feeling alone and unwanted, and NOT wanting to strain through a talk with Marcia Segal.
DIARY 3806
SUNDAY, MAY 6. Up and north with boots which I'd polished for the first time in years the night before, and we have our tuna for lunch, and we get the wrong directions, but we're still to the Baillie house about 10 minutes too early, but the Mr and Mrs talk to us very pleasantly about their bird feeders and their plants and their mushrooms and their wine making, and about 10:30 the rest of the guests come, including a beautiful Bob Quinlan whom I think is all eyes on crotches and his Japanese wife Tija, and some other interesting people, and Maggie Jarvis has brought some chocolate cookies which we have with tea and rolls that the Baillie's have provided, and at about 11 we're off to the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation for the morel hunt. I tell Art that he'll be the first one, sure, to find one, and he says he's actually hoping NOT to find any, just to go over the ground and find if they really ARE too early today. We chat as we walk along, but then we take off through the sparse woods and people separate, and we begin to find the first of the tree fungus Polysporus Squamosis which is our main catch of the day. The woods are dry except when we come to boggy areas, and we manage to keep quite dry until lunch, at the side of a stream, and everyone brings out the most lavish luncheon: with wines and cheeses and home-baked breads and patés and salamis of the most delicate odors. We sit around chewing on our tuna until they begin to have mercy on us and offer us the red wine that the Hungarian, who used to be the lead dancer in some Hungarian folk ballet, has brought with him, and we have some of the very aromatic but rather poor tasting rose-hip wine that Art has brought along. We're off again through the woods, though our driver has taken off on his own, and walk and walk, getting more and more into tangles on the mountainside, and I keep telling myself that I'm looking TOO HARD for the first one of the group, and that since I'm so CONSCIOUS of it, it won't happen, but John was even worse: he just KNEW he'd find either the FIRST or the ONLY one today, and in fact that was how it turned out. I was way up ahead with Art when we heard a shout from the rear, and
DIARY 3809
MONDAY, MAY 7. Up and decide that I can't possibly go in to work today, since I want to finish up with the index. Work from 8:45 to 9:45 finishing up the last of the entries, and then do the semi-final typing from 9:45-11:55, and since over 6 hours have been spent typing, next time I must try it with the cards, since this seems NOT to be the way to do it. John's at work, so I can go at my own speed, working until 1:55, then stopping to eat, then working from 2:25 to 5:25, when I stop to talk with John and have dinner, and then work from 7:10 to 7:55, when I'm over to watch the TV program on Eisenstein from 8 to 9:30 on Channel 13, which I suppose is the film that I missed at the Anthology Film Archives, and they have clips from ALL his films, including the two which aren't included in his "6" ("Strike," "Potemkin," "Ten Days That Shook the World," "Country Line," "Alexander Nevsky," and "Ivan the Terrible") "Bezhin Meadow" and the Mexican film. He surely seemed gay, since Tisse and his close friends were very cute, but he DID end up with a wife who died only in the 60s. Then back from 9:30 to 11, and finish up all but the final typing. The indexing is harder work than regular copy-editing, mainly because it has to be SO accurate. The double-checking of all the page numbers at the end is a particular pain, but it was amazing how many errors I DID find that would have gone unnoticed hadn't I checked it. It seems like a very good one to me, and when I took it in and Janet Mais looked at it, she said it looked good, and it was exactly 672 lines, though at first it was too short, then it seemed to be too long, and then I fiddled back and forth with 10 or 20 changes, being able to add MORE by making heads and subheads out of entries with the same first words, able to make LESS by taking out some of the topics and putting the page numbers in the GENERAL topic heading. So there's lots of leeeway, though I doubt that indices are usually made to such EXACT line counts. Taking out the glossaries and problems and exercises, there were probably only 200 pages, and the small size of the book made it EASIER to go from version to version (5 in all), I'm sure. Look forward to doing more work, since the PAY is so good, but NOT steadily: too nerve-wracking.
DIARY 3810
TUESDAY, MAY 8. Up and finish the index typing from 8 to 11:45, also taking a lot of time to figure that I could have gotten as much as $200 from counting EVERYTHING as an item---almost a WORD COUNT, but that $275 is a NICE amount to get for 30 hours work at a MAXIMUM. Then to ACC from 12:45 to 6:15, and I spend a lot of time talking to Barry about work and Barbara about morels and Alice about the dance. Do five units of camera copy checking, and get to the Proportion unit, again, at 5 pm. But things haven't officially started yet, and Ron's working on other things, or reading his book. I leave at 6:15 for what I think is the last Board of Director's meetings, and find there isn't any, just the regular meeting with vanden Heuvel at 8. Try to talk to Alan, but he's deep into talk with Michael Miller and Don Goodwin about Watergate, which turns me off. Then Miller gives me some names of places to see in Switzerland and Germany, and I find the questionnaires from the University of Georgia have come in, and I hand them out carefully to some of the cute people there, including Bill Kerr, who's sexy and intelligent and cute all in one. Then some greased muscle-builder type with black stretch pants and boots and a HUGE tight yellow shirt over dangling pectorals comes in and stiffly talks to everyone, and then leaves before the meeting starts. Vanden Heuvel is a good talker and I hope he ousts Hogan from the DA's office, but then Clingan talks, and he's really hooked his reputation onto Intro 475 and the gay community, such as it is (suck as it is?), and if he gets BEAT, which he should, because he has ABSOLUTELY no charisma as a politician, seeming a complainer, a whiner, someone who knows NO one and can get NOTHING done, it'll be because he's backed the gay bill, and no one will back a gay bill again. What a pity that such a loser had to attach himself to us. He tells of the awful details of the bill's being beaten (but the article in the Voice is even better), and then I have coffee and cookies because I'm starved, there's no one to talk to, and I leave, dejected, at 10:15, getting home for a late dinner and wash the dishes and get into a cold bed beside a snoring John at 12:15.
DIARY 3811
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9. Exercise again (mainly because I INTEND to get to Man's Country TONIGHT to see if the $2 night is better than the over-crowded $1 nights on Monday and Tuesday), so get to work late at 10, and work to 5:30 working on the Proportion unit all day, and Barbara's getting uptight about the schedule, since Syva's not been in all week because of tonsillitis and Barbara's sort of in charge. Get the first unit into typing tonight, as does Barbara and Ron, and we're officially off! I start on the Ratio unit, and it seems a bit easier than the one on Proportion. Home and dinner and wash the dishes and get over to Man's Country at 8, expecting to see it SORT of crowded, but it's totally empty. Strange black at the window, saying that the $2 night has been discontinued. "Since when?" "Since last night." I think there's going to be a battle, but he says "Oh, I'll let you in for the $2.25 tonight, but I just wanted to say that tonight'll be the last night." Oh, that's OK for tonight, losers for the other $2 nights. Into the tacky locker room with awful people in the halls, into the pool area for no one, open the steam room door to get a fetid smell from inside (I'd smoked, of course, and felt quite high). Back to take a shower, and some awful people are there, too. Look into the sauna, and I GUESS it was Rolf curved into the corner, sweating profusely on his white body, and I went upstairs to find VERY few people in the halls and NO ONE in the orgy rooms. A real losing evening! Into one of the rooms, and Joe Farinas is past first, saying how he'd like to meet with us, and how we should come for dinner next weekend, so I have to invite him to Henry's, and that's probably what he wanted. He's in a couple of times, and then there are a few strange abortions: one young fellow comes in, I wave at him to close the door and he's about to leave before I say "Close the DOOR." He sits down, saying his name is Al, and feels a bit, then puts his towel back on and leaves. Then there's a CUTE muscled kid who looks in, comes in and goes right down on me, and I feel for him, coming up myself, but I guess I'm not his type, because in a moment he, too, is gone. Joe's in and out a few