1973 4 of 6
DIARY 4054
MONDAY, AUGUST 13. Up at 7 and immediately over to finish proofreading the second third of Garrett and Silver by 8:10, and get to work at 9. Finish the practice problems through P and Q at 12, and get back to proofreading the three that have piled on my desk in the meantime. Do five units to almost finish the last one when Ginny comes in at 4:30 with blues for the second grade answer sheets and practice problems, and get through a great number of them so fast that she remarks about it, and into the bargain I've found a number of things that she says are quite marginal, but which took a sharp eye to find, so that I'm not only FAST, I'm pretty GOOD at it, too, which would lead her to think I should stay around (if SHE stays around, since the news was that she was out "sick" with Dick on Wednesday and Thursday, and it seems obvious that she was looking for a job). Leave at 5:30 for an 8-hour day, feeling pretty GOOD in the new cubicle, and actually getting INVOLVED in my work for the first time in a long time, getting a lot done, feeling good about doing it. Home at 6 and have dinner, and Robert Walker calls and we make arrangements to get together tomorrow evening, just before the Dufours, and if he "fits" into the group, he'll be invited along to dinner with us. He sounds young and interesting over the phone. Have Talk #5, which strangely hinges on my writing (see previous page), and then I type two pages to catch up to date, and then get over at 8 to watch "The Temptress" with Greta Garbo, until 10. She's quite good in it, though her hair looks best when it's buried under a tight cloche hat, and her sexual ecstasy when she wipes the blood from her wounds is almost Roman Catholic in its explicitness. John's out for a walk on the Promenade, coming back about 10:30, and I've showered and shaved (which I DIDN'T do this morning, going to work looking DREADFUL for the first time in ages), but there's still no sign of sex, and I stay up and come quite quickly, being too tired to really stretch things out, and very conscious that it's going to be a busy week socially and travel-wise, so I don't want to exhaust myself in those tortured spurts of sperm which feel so good, but so enervate.
DIARY 4055
TUESDAY, AUGUST 14. Exercised yesterday but not for the next three days, which means that AFTER I finish exercising on Friday I should still exercise on Friday and Saturday to keep to the five per week. To work at 9:15 and finish up the blues to 9:45, then proofread until 11:30, and then there's NOTHING to do, and instead of checking with everybody, as I usually do, I merely tell Ron that I can't find anything else, and get a good IBM typewriter into my office and write a four-page letter to Rita, getting something off the list WHILE earning money until 1:30. Scrabble till 2:30, and call Pam Goett to make arrangements to take the stuff to her tomorrow, and Peter Rooney, who says that the gal in Washington was sending up the Purchase Order, but that I shouldn't start until he gets it. He ALSO says that she wants it by August 29, but I ENSURE that he's told her that his agreement with ME was to do it in three weeks, and he assures me that he's told her that. There's proofing to do again, just a bit, and Marge comes in at 5:15 and so we chat until 5:45, when I leave to meet Rob Walker at the Algonquin at 6. He's sitting in the lobby, plumper and older than I'd imagined, sadly, looking a bit like Pope Hill, though just as personally pleasant, and he informs me that they brought out a "ratty blue jacket" for him to put over his sport shirt when he went into the bar, so we're down the block to the Cafe Brazilia for two drinks each, which he INSISTS on paying for, as well as buying the "Little Night Music" ticket for $8.50. Meet John and the Dufours on the street, and John, stupid, brightly asks "Oh, are you coming along too?" I don't know what to say until Rob quietly says "No," and it passes. We're walking over to the Copter Club, which they like from their seats near the window, and then down to drive to the Grotta Azzura, where I stand in line for about 20 minutes while they roam the streets, and then we're in to the loud crowded place where they have Lobster Fra Diavola, which they love, John has the octopus, and I have the veal rollatini, VERY small portion and VERY tough, but tasty, and the Spedini beforehand was thankfully filling. To Ferrara's for dessert, then leave, dropping them at the hotel at 12, and getting home, quite tired and poor, at 12:30 pm.
DIARY 4056
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15. Up late, feeling slightly hung-over from the two drinks with Rob, the drink at the Copter Club, and the two bottles of Sangria at the Grotta, and get to work at 9:30. Proofread and work on various things to 11:10, phone Cindy with Regis DuVal's address for French translating work, give Ruth Cyndy Crawford's address for information about Boston area and restaurants, and phone Pam and Peter and Rob, as I erroneously said I did YESTERDAY, and FINISH reading "Gravity's Rainbow" at 1:05 pm, just before lunch, while I read Whitman, and leave at 2 after only 4½ hours at work to drop off the proofreading at Pam's, where I almost collide with her in the hall, where she says "You do such a good proofreading JOB that I'll request that you do the copyediting the next time, since you're really doing a lot of THAT when you proofread!" Good on her. To the Algonquin at 2:30, and Bernard's inside phoning, then we're into the back seat where I get him map-oriented, and we're up in the gray day through the West Side Highway, the Hutchison River Parkway and the Merritt Parkway to Darien and down to the LaRue's at 4:30 to hear Mary Rasmussen clacking away at the typewriter on the porch. Chat about mushrooms, which there aren't any of, and then Mary suggests we go down to see about crabbing. I see a few small ones, and suggest we GET some for dinner. No one REALLY wants to, but Helen says she'll clean her OWN, Jan says he'll come WITH us, and the Dufours seem interested, so we're down with net and bucket, I let a big one get away which Mary later enticed with her meat bait and I GET it this time, and we have two HUGE ones, two good-sized ones, and two little ones, while Helen's in the kitchen cooking. Eat the crabs on the porch, GREAT with melted butter, and then inside for drinks and some curry dish with Mary-brought FRESH squash and FRESH green beans, DELICIOUS, and some GOOD Barzac wine for a dessert wine with the all-blueberry "cake" with whipped cream on top, and even the coffee has "Schlag" on top, and they talk and talk and TALK until 11, until I finally INSIST we go toward home, and we drop them at the hotel. At 12, and home again at 12:30, VERY tired, but happy.
DIARY 4057
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16. To work at 9:30, feeling hung-over AGAIN, and having wakened during the night with a GREAT thirst and INTENSE cramps in my legs, which reminds me of some disease Azak said CAUSED cramps in the legs, and get to work at 9:30 to have NOTHING, still, to do, so I read pages and PAGES of Whitman, feeling good about THAT, until 12:30, when there's a unit to proofread, and then play Scrabble until 2, when there's another to read until 3, and lots of miscellaneous problems drop in and out through the afternoon, as well as Sally saying that she's leaving at the end of August to move with her husband to Aruba, Ruth saying goodbye, Barry complaining about his lot in a dying company, and Alice talking about her lack of sex life and wanting to retire for the rest of her life. I read and work through the rest of the afternoon, punctuating it with calls back and forth among Arnie and Rob and me, settling for this evening. Finally ARNIE picks up the tickets and even meets Rob in the hotel lobby at 5:30, which Rob has to call to verify JUST as the switchboard operator's going off duty at 5:25, and I subway down to the Village and meet them as they drive up in a cab at 5:50. Down to Ratner's, which Arnie said he didn't like, and we're in and don't like it ANYWAY: the Salisbury steak ISN'T made of protose but of mashed potatoes, Rob had eaten a HUGE steak for lunch, he said, so he ate VERY little of his stuffed pepper, and the food wasn't good except for the rolls, and the "open peach pie" was pretty good, but not really worth 85¢. Pay the bill and search for a bar, but there isn't any until a neighborhood place with 40¢ beers just next to the theater, so we spend the time, Arnie bending a weary Rob's ear until 7:30, and then get out to the "Faggot" (see next page) which is both plus and minus, calling Nick for the acupuncturist's address during the intermission, when the split-skulled sotted black get out of the smelly phone booth, and back for the end at 9:30, and then get into Brooklyn to show Rob the Promenade, and then lead him to the entrance to the Club Baths, where we exchange addresses and he'll stay until he joins another friend at a recording session at 3-4 am. Home at 11, John already in bed, and I shower wearily and crawl in, covering myself for the first time in a month.
DIARY 4059
FRIDAY, AUGUST 17. Wake at 8:15 and John says he wants to leave right away, but I insist I won't be able to leave until 10, and do some things around the apartment, do the dishes, and type five pages to get up to date just at 10, and then pack quickly and get onto the road at 10:10. John takes the driving through the crowded Merritt Parkway and up the route through New Haven and Hartford which doesn't offer the difficulties that it did before, and through Massachusetts on a fast highway. Across the river and into New Hampshire before I finally demand to stop, in part worn out by the talk #6 we've been having, which seems to me to be the essence of bitchery and pettiness (see next page), and I say, at 2:30, "I'm hungry" and he agrees to my driving off to a parking area, where we go back to eat our tuna fish and have a few swigs of the wine, which he's saving for cocktails tonight. Back into the car at 2:45, and off onto the black roads on the map, which turn out to be faster even than the highway, and where I thought we'd get there just at 6, at 5:15 we're pulling into Center Harbor and John gets out to try to find the Harms's. They're not there, so he leaves a note for them, and we're up to Center Sandwich the long way around, since neither of us seems to remember the Bean Road, but then Route 119 doesn't seem familiar either. In to the Corner House Inn to find a note from Mary Rasmussen that she's ill and won't be able to make it up. So we pack into the bedroom, above the dining room, sharing a bathroom with the maid who guilelessly says "And my bedroom is on the other side," and down to pull chairs onto the grass and sip the Scuppernong while John is feeling SO relaxed that he actually says "You know, I like this almost as much as Hemlock Hall." What greater praise could any place receive? In to dinner at 6:45 and the basket of popovers is incredibly eggy and light, and the butter melts in great quantities in its richness. But they've counted nicely and there are no extras, the "Chicken Woman hostess" say, clutching her fingers. Swordfish steak for a surprise, and an eggplant and squash vegetable dish and a GREAT brown betty with melting ice cream. Drive down to find they haven't picked up their note, over to the library to waste time, and we're back at 9, feeling VERY tired, and straight to bed!
DIARY 4061
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18. Up fairly early and toss about waiting for him to wake, and we're up and around at 7, down to a hearty breakfast after having to take a back table, since a group of four were taking up the best table in the place, in the bow windowed area, and breakfast is good, and we have had ANOTHER talk, #7, which makes me feel VERY self-conscious when the Harmses are downstairs (see next page), and then I drive him to take his car to be repaired, and we're all into the red car to go hunting for mushrooms at the falls. Get into the parking lot to find HOSTS of what everyone decides are chanterelles, and we fill about 1/3 a 20-pound bag full of them, and then fan out through the woods to find many OTHER kinds of mushrooms, including even some that look VERY much like Amanita, which I throw into the good area, and it's not until the next day that I think of Lucy's "But mightn't that damage the GOOD mushrooms that are coming up?" and we can't identify most of them, and finally about 1 we decide there's nothing better to do than go back into the "center" of Center Sandwich and stop at Mrs. Moody's, or someone's place, and buy some butter and beer and John takes over while she fussed about a neighbor that's sick, and picks my brain about proofreading rates and practices and perfection in New York, and I point out that you really shouldn't spell it Aardvark, and John cooks up the black things and the few cepes that we find in THREE frying pans, and she gets out wine, and we all sit around and talk, and it's VERY festive with the two daughters coming in, and then we leave when Ben about falls asleep, and out to Squam Lake for some swimming, which I do for about five minutes, then lay on the blanket getting slight sun until 5, when we're back to shower and DON'T go to dinner since we feel full from the mushrooms, and have talk #8 (see following page) and get down to the concert just at 7:55, and into the auditorium for the mostly classical program, then leave at 10:15 to go to the party, where thankfully there's LOTS of food for my now empty stomach, and barrels of good unbitter Falstaff beer, and the party, I think, is QUITE a success (see subsequent page), and we roll home at 11:45, feeling delightfully pooped, but strangely stomach-troubled, which really doesn't pass until about TUESDAY, when I'm sure I won't die.
DIARY 4065
SUNDAY, AUGUST 19. Down long after John, still trying to catch up with the Times and not succeeding, and find mushrooms that he thinks might contain psilocybin which he lays on the table while we eat. Get the bill and find that it's only $1 for breakfast if we STAY there, and $4 for dinner, so the prices are good indeed. We pack up and discuss leaving a tip, leaving nothing, and have only $8 left in the kitty, which dinner last night would have cancelled. Drive down Bean Road and stop to search for mushrooms in two places, finding a lot of different KINDS, but not many that we could identify, and NO more chanterelles and only about THREE cepes, two wormy and one spotted that we finally throw away. Then down to the high school and find cars parked all over our mushrooms, but decide that they probably ARE OK, and pick as many as we can find, about three dozen big and little. Then back into the car just after noon and start the long drive back to the city, stopping for corn and tomatoes and a cake for John on the way, and I drive through the very last part of New Hampshire before crossing the river to the turnpike in Vermont, all the way down through Vermont and Massachusetts before stopping for lunch at 2, quickly, finding NOTHING at the rest stop, and just over the border in Connecticut John stops for gas and takes over the last 120 miles into the city, with the Merritt getting VERY busy and long waits for the toll booths (where jokers are giving out PENNIES in change, which we return to the NEXT one, which of course perpetuates it), and through the hot city and dreadful traffic to get home about 7, after deciding not to stop in the city for the wine at the Algonquin. Lug the stuff upstairs and find the lovely newsstand STILL has a Times, check the schedule, and we have dinner about 7:45 of mushrooms, black but tasty, even though my stomach is still saying "NO, not really WANTED so soon after feeling a bit upset by the batch yesterday," and sweet corn of GREAT quality, and fresh tomatoes, which really don't go with the mushrooms. Over to read the Times until just before 10, thinking to watch the last of "Cousin Bette," and John looks at me strangely, and I say "Oh, it was 9." Thank God for reruns. Over to wash dishes, sit a bit looking at TV, and sexless to bed at 11, FINISHED with papers. THIS week (or LAST week) watch "Tolstoy," probably this week.
DIARY 4066
MONDAY, AUGUST 20. Wake and self-consciously use binaca spray, but we peck only ONCE. Peter Rooney called last night to say I should pick up the indexing job from him, since he'd gotten a verbal go-ahead from Washington, and the contract would be sent to him soon, and get to work at 9 to get a call from Henry Messer, saying that he wants three Mattachine articles typed tonight, so I should pick them up from him at 6. So that's what I'm going to be doing TONIGHT. Have ONE unit to read, and I'm finished at 11. Phone Pam and Henry and Con Ed and Susan about the party, and then read almost ALL the rest of "Walt Whitman," feeling good about THAT, though I regret not having brought in the Harper and Row test. Marge is in early, cutting Barry, who wanted to shift to her desk, out of the picture, and we talk and I tell her about the weekend and she tells me about HER weekend with very rich psychiatrists who have themselves barricaded behind their pride in their work and their DETERMINATION that they're to be happy, whether they're ACTUALLY happy or not, while the woman writes about Wittgenstein's Semiotics, or something, as applying to the Women's Liberation Movement. Leave at 5:30, get down to Peter's to get the load of work, having to have it finished by the 10th, astounded that HE'S told them they'll get FIVE levels of indexing, and OBVIOUSLY he wants to make it necessary to use his system. Then over to Henry's at 6:05, and wake up Carl, watch TV, and Henry and John Hood are in at 6:20, Henry's forgotten the carbon tape for the typewriter, and after he cycles to his office to get it, it's the two reel kind which is no good for me. Out at 6:35 and home late for dinner, and we eat and chat until 8, time for "He Who Gets Slapped" on TV, which I thought I'd seen before, but I hadn't, Lon Chaney doing a strange job, and the CLOWN sequences being VERY ugly and HARDLY funny. Select "The Years" to read next, and get everything ready to take to work tomorrow, which promises to be an even BUSIER day, since I have to start with the Mattachine stuff, and I only hope there's a typewriter available WITH the carbon ribbon, and I have the foresight to take MY ball along so that the TYPE will be the same. Brought Certs home from work today to put under the bed.
DIARY 4067
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12. Wake and QUICKLY get out of bed and get everything together, and the VERY morning I choose to go to the check-cashing window of the bank their window's machine's broken at 8:05, so I mumble into work at 8:45 and corner a typewriter and do all four of Henry's articles very neatly by 11, then Pam calls to say that work's IN, and Shelby of Dell calls to say that a rekeying job is IN, and I phone Lana Lasanti and set up an appointment with Polly Brown of Travel Dynamics for an appointment for being a Tour Director at 3:30, and brought in the Metropolitan Museum schedule with a list of things I want to see, so I'm SET for the day. Lasanti recommends a resume, so I sit and write and then type THAT out, even though Ron, curse him, had decided that I should be working on the rest of the Practice Problems from level P, and then should do R and S ones, which will keep me busy for a few days JUST when I wanted spare time to work on freelance stuff. Agree to meet Henry outside at 2:45, step into the back of their open Cadillac feeling like a dignitary, Henry "offers" then takes back another article, after a horrible almost-disaster with setting the PAPER margin at 0, rather than the left of TYPE at 0, and only my typing on a SMALLER (12 char per inch) typewriter saves the day, since he'd set up a 60-character line for a 10 character per inch typewriter; so I had up to 72 characters, and used a maximum of 66, which is OK. Whew! He DRIVES (Carl, rather) me to 47th and 2nd, and up to Dell to take a LONG time being TOLD (and I DIDN'T know, either) how to re-key (for $3 an hour!), then walk to HBJ and get the second job from Pam's delivery, at 3:35, phone Lasanti to say I'll be late, then TOTALLY mess up the interview, except she LIKED the resume, and said I MIGHT be asked to do a two-week TRIAL trip, which would be nice ANYWAY, just for the EXPERIENCE. Out at 4:15 and "decide" to get the BMT for home, but I'm on the uptown IRT local track, a train comes in, so I'm on for the Metropolitan, for a VERY small and disappointing Poe exhibit, neat Man Ray photos, TINY Italian Renaissance exhibit, and a GOLD that KNOCKS my eyes out, and of course it gets lousy reviews for being like a Bloomingdale's store window. Home at 6:15 to eat, do dishes, and get out to Club Baths (see next page) with John at 8:15. HE gets back about 10, I get back just after 11. NEAT.
DIARY 4070
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22. Wake and decide to stay at home to work on the HBJ job today, since I obviously won't get anything done at work EXCEPT work, and glance at the TV schedule to see that there's even a movie to reward my staying home this afternoon. Work from 8:30 to 12:30 and almost finish, but stop with John for lunch, getting done at 1 in time for "Saints and Sinners," a good thing with a teary ending about the end of the world NOT coming and everyone "climbing the mountain" to fall into the "right person's" arms at the end as everyone gathers under the cross in the sunset. Back to work at 3:20 and finish at 4:05, deciding to charge DOUBLE the 13 hours I actually worked on it, and it goes through OK. Then get right to the Dell work, even saying that I started at 4, and work through until 6:30 on putting the page numbers from the NEW galleys into the OLD book, cutting and pasting the OLD index on their paper so that I have ROOM for the new page numbers, getting 27 pages out of that, and do the first TWO pages in an hour and a quarter, VERY slow and boring work. But hopefully the LAST that I have to do for them before they trust me with INDEXING. Then have dinner and John's seen an ad for the First Avenue Screening Room, with two things that he wants to see, and I say I'll go along with him, so we stop off for the SECOND time at the Algonquin to find there's STILL some confusion about the bottles, probably only TWO of them, and the manager will have to call John later. Get to the theater at 8 to find that it's a DIFFERENT double, but we go in anyway, to look at a Max Factor #9's Dorothy Tutin weeping before some bumpy sculpture, and then everyone's smoking and talking and sticking their heads into the narrow way, and the screen's up high to give neck-cricks, and it's NOT a bargain for $3. But "Private Parts" is a neat, nude, bloody, mystery thriller, and natural nudity sure DOES add to the kinkiness of a film, though I SURELY didn't believe that handsome narrow-hipped wide-eyed Ventantonio was a WOMAN, even WITH "those jugs" of someone else. Fun flick. "Savage Messiah" was a good one, too, with a handsome Henri Gaudier Brzeska and his 40ish platonic Polish woman lover. Out VERY tired at 11:30, and rattle over the CLEAR-night parkway home.
DIARY 4071
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23. Up rather tired and have a Cert which is again used only for a peck on John's lip surfaces, and get to work at 9 after taking an even SLOWER IRT local when I catch a Chambers Street subway by mistake. Finish Practice Problems for level P at 12, and give them to a surprised Ron, then do a critique of Classroom Activities Introduction and samples for Sally until 1. Scrabble for an hour and a half, as is usual, except that Ron is winning every ONE of them recently, which doesn't make me too happy, particularly when he gets two seven-letter words in one game and a score of 460 while I have only 300, for the second-highest scoring game he's ever seen. Marge gets in at 1:30 and I regale her with the fact that John didn't even KNOW it was me last Tuesday (though he said that he WASN'T in any kind of fantasy, thought he treated me rougher because he was more uninhibited NOT knowing it was my body he was playing with), and she thought it was fun to talk about. Check other classroom activities until 5:30, and debate about not coming in TOMORROW. Back to have dinner and type 3 pages after doing the dishes, and Arthur Mitchell had called, wanting to come over tonight, so John agrees that I can have the living room, and I watch the LAST chapter of "Cousin Bette" from 8-9, marveling at the acting abilities (as everyone else had) of Margaret Tyzack, and it'll be IMPOSSIBLE to think of Cousin Bette without thinking of her in the future; and the fittingness of the lover's poisoning the broad who says "Pray for me---that I might die," with her lion-maned face sticking yellowly out, and it was PARTICULARLY gripping when she OPENED her eyes, showing she was still INSIDE. The heart attacks were gripping, too, and her death scene one of the strangest in literature, Mr. Hulot grappling with her nurse as she gets her final attack. Then shower and fix up the love-nest in the living room, and Arthur finally rings the bell at 10:30, dressed sexily in sheer nylon shirt and silk pants, all black, and we talk about Debbie's article about him in the Voice negatively for a bit, and then he starts into the magazines, gets out the hash pipe, and the lights are down, clothes are off, and sex begins (see next page).
DIARY 4074
FRIDAY, AUGUST 24. Too tired even to spray or pill my mouth, and up to drag into work at 9, taking Dell with me, after having brought the index back last night, thinking to work on it today, but I decided to get CLOSE to 30 hours (29½) in this week. Sally turns over the Classroom Activities to me, about 90 units at 2 hours each, 180 hours, or over 5 weeks of work for one person, and no one's TOLD her to do this, only her "sense of responsibility" urges her to ensure that her work's not lost. Then to R Practice Problems, 1½ hours of Scrabble, and 11 page of DEL ("Dawn's Early Light"---from DELL) just to keep my finger in---and Ginny came in to buy stamps and didn't even flinch when she saw me doing something else, and Ron came in, not even really seeing it, I don't think. Work fairly well through the day, knowing how much I'm cheating them ANYWAY, and leave at 5:30 for the third 8-hour day this week. Home lugging the index cards-fanfold that I bought with two ribbons and index cards for $12.82 today, and in at 6:05 to get John to go to Chuan Yuan early because the seats at the window are always full, but those are the only ones full when we get in. But the FOOD is just MARVELOUS, though he insists he can't taste any of the flavors, but even the TEXTURES are great, and I end up marking up the restaurant lists (which I Sabined at work yesterday, finally) on Saturday morning and giving it EVEN a higher score than ALADDIN, a top score of 70---which is pretty good, considering the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE is 80, and all for only $10.10 INCLUDING two ice cream cones for dessert. Then stroll the Promenade to watch a cloud-pathed sunset which inverted to surf-on-shore, as it used to from my 57th Street window, until 7:30, when we're back to brush teeth and drive into town for the Washington Square Methodist Church's presentation of the long-sought Marx Brother's "Animal Crackers" with an audience of aficionados, and they did a Laurel and Hardy "Them Thar Hills" until 9:05, permitting me to drop another dime in the car-park slot, then the fuzzy, but FAST, silly, wacky, charismatic, play-like (George S. Kaufman), silly-plotted (about a $100,000 Beaugard painting switched back and forth), FUNNY, LOADED film that lasts a surprisingly long 100 minutes. Back at 11, tired, but John asks, "Are you tired?" so we smoke, get excited, popper, he comes, I do myself, SLEEP.
DIARY 4075
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25. Wake just after 8, and John's up, so I'm up to help him make the bed, and then he's over to the other side. I take about an hour to do some of the things I've wanted to do, like take all the books put on top the books on the shelf and put them into the storage room bookshelves, and file the books that I wanted to keep out of the souvenirs and put the rest of them into their box neatly and put the box on the top of the closet, so that it leaves only essentially the stamps to do, and I'm over at 9:30 to start pounding away on the diary, doing 13 pages by 12:15, and then I stop for lunch, and we decide to go off to Newark right then to see the Tibet exhibit. Long time to get there since I direct us wrong, and we get in at 1:50. Great film and slide show about the oneness of all creation, and then we look at the tankas and jewelry and Buddhas and the altar, and I buy the third volume of the catalog for $5.25, which has everything that's good in the place, and we're out at 3:50. Back into New York at 4:30 and I put things away and work on the indexing job from 5:30 till 6:30, when we have dinner, and get to talking about the oneness of the universe, and John doesn't understand my points about dying until he understands that I want all the experiences of life AND THEN want the experience of a good death, one which is prepared nicely for and accepted, as stopping breathing in a great pot trip would be. Then he goes off to the Eulenspiegel party at the WSDG offices about 8, and I do the dishes and get to work on the index again from 8:30 to 11, when I go over to watch "The Iron Duke" with George Arliss until 1, seemingly drastically cut, though he plays the same quick-spoken, utterly sensible and nearly always right (with even a knowledge of the future) Duke of Wellington. Then I don't feel like stopping watching, so I watch the end of "Ring of Terror" as the guy gets a heart attack when the cadaver's body's hand catches on his coat in the mausoleum, then watch the last half-hour of "Horse Feathers" with the Marx Brothers, and then cut off TV at 1:30, still not feeling like sleeping. So I smoke, then quickly come, and doze off about 2:15. Wake again at 5 and John's STILL not in, and he drives across the bridge at 5:15 am, and I don't hear him come in.
DIARY 4076
SUNDAY, AUGUST 26. Wake at 8:15, John still sleeping, so I creep out and immediately start working on the energy index, keeping it up for 4 hours until 12:15, when I'm out for the Times and a quart of milk (it's really amazing how much I DON'T have to do for the regular shopping), and read it a bit before having lunch, then back to the index from 1:30 to 5:30, feeling weary of it, having worked a regular 8-hour day today, but also feeling that I have it finally under control, having written TWO letters, dated yesterday and tomorrow, to Peter explaining what I'm doing, so that hopefully he no longer has to worry about my doing a good job for him and them. Settle into the Times more before dinner, do the dishes, and then back to the Times before watching the Boston Ballet doing NO ballet at all (only a spoof on Mozartean minuets to "The Water Music" and a "Dancing around the world" which has a few Russian flourishes and otherwise it's French, German, Italian, Irish, English rock music) from 8-9, the first chapter of "The Golden Bowl" which seems so fraught with undertones and meaningful glances followed by nothing verbal that it's a huge soufflé: mostly air, from 9-10, and then I shower, while John goes to bed, and I sit reading the New York Times Magazine and articles about the Atlanta architect who built the Hyatt House Hotel, the monsoon season in India, and Karen Horney, and that gets me through until 11, when I watch "Van Gogh" on Biographies. I'd felt MUCH like going to sleep because I was tired from last night and working today, but again the "BOTH/AND" philosophy kept haunting me, and I kept thinking "Well, if I DO stay up and see the show" (the same as "Well, I was going to read this ANYWAY, so I might as well do it NOW" thereby NOT doing something which SHOULD have a higher priority) "I WILL manage to get enough sleep, I WILL manage to get through the next day, and I WILL have seen the TV show, which means I won't feel tempted to watch it at some OTHER time LATER." So I watch it, wondering whether I should feel HAPPY or SAD about my complete adaptation to "BOTH/AND." It was the same feeling about coming last night: I wanted to, but didn't want to, so I did it with minimal time and feeling, so that I could say I DID it, but I really wasn't INTO it.
DIARY 4077
MONDAY, AUGUST 27. Again wake after 8, John and I both wake about the same time, and caress ONLY for a moment before we're out making the bed. I haven't been exercising, but there's no TIME, and with typing the envelopes for Peter's and Rita's letter (since it was decided at dinner last night that I should borrow the $300 from RITA rather than from John, who will feel much too pressed and pressured if HE doesn't have the money as security), putting the dishes away, and getting everything together, I don't get to work until 9:30, which is a pity. Finish off the R Practice Problems, and Pam Goett calls, saying that I have an 800+ page Cost Accounting book to copyedit from HBJ, thankfully starting NEXT week, and I do two pages of the rekeying on the sly, and two during my 1½ hour lunch. Alice is in to chat, Ron leaves me off technical art to check and a retyping job for the Speed Reviews to evaluate, and I begin on the S Practice Problems before Marge comes in at 5:15 for a heartbreaker. Bruce had given me her check, since I felt she might be in after he left; I left a note on her deck, "I have a PRESENT for you." She read it, and her face lit up in embarrassed, pleased, little-girl disbelief: "What IS it." God, she SO wanted a present, and it was all she could do to keep her face from falling COMPLETELY when it turned out it was only her paycheck. She quickly made some comment like "My friend," but it really seemed TOO painful to see her eager WILLINGNESS to be pleased, then dampened by my really NOT having a present for her. Leave at 5:30 and quickly home, work on pages until the good chicken dinner is ready, we talk about Horney and the San Francisco hotel architect, I put off the dishes to work on the rekeying from 7:10, then Dick Smith calls with more typing (which he'll bring to ME, wait for it, and take it back, much more sensible than MY picking it up, taking it to type, and then delivering it), I do the dishes, and groan to John that I don't have any TIME for him, how can we have sex if I zip out of bed in the morning to work, and stay up EVERY night this week until 1 watching TV? Work to 11, and during the innumerable intermissions during Channel 7's showing of the Russian "War and Peace" from 11:30 to 1, after the "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" slam by Geraldo Rivera of the cops using a METAL bat "because of the wood shortage" to blank Mattachine at baseball on the news.
DIARY 4078
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28. Wake about 8:10, and John seems excited as we caress, and we neck (without kissing, though I've sprayed) until I sort of cuddle around his waist, and then go down on his stiff cock, swinging myself around to his hands, eventually his lips, and he even gets out the Baby Magic, and I contrive to come first, though he's quite hard and ready, and then he comes with satisfaction, and we lie together, then I dive for the towel, and it's almost 9. Maybe that's why we've not been having sex: just no TIME, but this morning we both knew I was working at home. Start on the indexing at 8:45, getting things organized, and then I get to typing cards, getting about 120 for the first 25 pages, too many at 5 per page, and find a duplicate about noon, so I call Peter Rooney and then Wendy Griffin, and they both get the idea I'm a good person to have working for their jobs, and she likes my organizing everything under one word, and he likes my letters and organization, too. Lunch from 12:45 to 1:15, cheating a bit on the time, and stop at 6 after having done ANOTHER 110 cards, for 230 total for the day, and for the FIRST day, that's not bad at ALL, can probably get to 300-400 at LEAST in a "going" day. So I need only about 5 GOOD days to get ALL the cards, though I'm sad to find that I have a lot of "duplicates" already, where a whole five-line CARD will only add one PAGE NUMBER to a master cad. Learning goes on ALL the time! Dinner of chicken AND beef pilaf, very good, then to the dishes and get to the INDEXING for DELL at 8, working through to 11:30, checking everything twice, and getting to the point where I KNOW I could finish tomorrow, and SURELY by Thursday, one day ahead of the deadline. Talk to Marty and Dick Smith and Celia Brewer on the phone, and then over at 11:30 to watch the second part of "War and Peace," finally getting to the ball, which seems cut and not NEARLY so impressive on the small screen of the TV. Then at 1 over for the ritual cookies and milk, then back to shower and brush my teeth and smoke a half-pipe and crawl into a hot bed, fan going on John, for an 83 temperature-humidity index day at NOON, at 89° and 62% humidity. AWFULEST days of summer.
DIARY 4079
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29. Up just after 8 again, and get into work at 9:00, during which day I work again on the rekeying for just over an hour, entertained the people who came into my office to keep cool with conversation, since the air conditioner's off, and reacted to Dror's statement that no one's planned anything yet for Sally's leaving tomorrow. So Diane is recruited to shop for the gift, and Dror and Ron go around to collect the money. I work some on Sally's stuff and some on the Q practice problems, seeming to see no end to them, and leave at 5:30, getting home for dinner of hamburger and corn and talk about John's seeing the finish of the article with his "laying to rest" of serialism and neoclassicism, and about his having to get another job fairly soon. Then he goes off to the movies, and I do the dishes in the heat and get in to start working on the indexing again, the major accomplishments of this session being the strict determination that "U.S." really should not appear ANYWHERE, and I go through the 250 or so cards that I've made up so far and sure enough it appears on almost every card that doesn't say "world" something. This inspires me to jot down the notes for the page on how to use the index, and I get quite carried away, so obviously it's going to come in for heavy editing before it's finished. Oh, forgot that Dick Smith came into work about 4:50 with some articles to type for the Mattachine Times, and I worked through THEM until 5:30, happy that he was acting as both pickup and deliverer of them at once. Makes it MUCH better for me, though I have to go to the meeting tomorrow. Work to 11:30, taking 10 minutes on it when the power goes off and Mrs. Johnson amuses me and terrifies herself by walking into MY apartment, taking my "John?" as a burglar in HER apartment, and hooting out "I can't open it," when she, in her nervousness, can't unlock the door. Interesting. Then to the third section of "War and Peace," quite striking in Natasha's misery over Anatole and the battle of Borodino, particularly of the wheeling circle of horsemen from the helicopter, and I jerk off gently and then anxiously, smoking bidis, and shower and brush my teeth and crawl EXHAUSTED into bed about 1:30 am, glad this week is almost OVER.
DIARY 4982
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30. Up about 7:30 and zip through getting everything ready and get to work at 8:30, literally before ANYONE is there, and even the door on the left is locked and I have to go in through the door on the right. Work on "Dawn's Early Light" until 10, almost finishing it, and then out to do shopping with Dror for Sally---I suggest we get an Indian shawl, but we can't find any after trying about a half-dozen stores, but in the last we see a poncho from Ecuador in nice colors, so we buy that for $15 and $1 tax, and then buy three bottles of Taylor's Sparkling Burgundy, not VERY good tasting, for $16 also, and a card. Back to the office at 11:30 and work a BIT from 11:30 to 12:30, then finish the rekeying at 2:15, and Sally's back from lunch, feeling quite stoned on one drink, and the party starts at 2:45, and Tom's there, but Freya says to open the bottles anyway, and he has more to drink and Freya's the first to observe that he's smashed, but afterwards it's obvious! Say goodbye to Sally when I leave at 4:30, and Tom's gotten in wine and ice for his OWN party, and I dash uptown to 47th and 2nd in the broiling heat to get the rekeying jobs in to Jennifer Daily at 4:55, and she says that Shelby's leaving tomorrow to go back to school, and that SHE'S leaving in two weeks to start freelancing again, so I might not get into Dell AFTER all. Then walk to Grand Central and into an INCREDIBLY hot subway shuttle to an INCREDIBLY crowded Times Square, SO happy that I don't have to do it all the time, and get down to Mattachine at 5:30 to find Dick Smith and Henry Messer waiting around for the paste-up job from Esther, and the New York State Police want someone to come down to the World Trade Center, so I leave at 5:45 and get there at 6:05 for an interesting time till 7:55 (see page 4080). Home to find John gone, and I cook corn and liver for myself SWEATING PROFUSELY over the dining room table, and then I type three pages and read ALL of the Village Voice for the new week, and take a shower, and by then it's time for the start of the LAST part of "War and Peace," and I can barely make it through to the finish at 1, and then smoke and fall into bed, exhausted.
DIARY 4083
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31. Up at 8 and decide I MUST start on the items of the list---the LONGEST "THINGS TO DO LIST" for years---so I check that I DO have to see the dentist, having been away now for 8 months, and I sewed the shirt-opening last night and put the clothes together to take to the launderers this morning, and John puts some of HIS stuff in, too. To work at 9 and finish practice problems for S at 10:30, and then start on the Harper and Row test. Do Progress Check Q35-1 from 11 to 12 that he gives me to do from Marge, and then I WIN at Scrabble at 2, putting down TWO seven-letter words: LITTERbR and bETUNIA, having gotten ONE blank by accident, and figuring WHAT the hell and take the SECOND one when it seems to be right where I'm picking from. Then CONTINUE working on the Harper and Row test until about 5, when Ginny says that she'll be out next week and DICK will have lots of work for me, which Ron says is OK, since he won't have much for me to do UNTIL GRADE ONE starts coming in---so we ARE going to be doing that! And Ruth Regan calls about a job! Alice says goodbye for her week away at Martha's Vineyard with Joan, hearing that she'll have work for NEXT week when she comes back, but that's it. I finish up with 31 hours for the week, not bad with ONE DAY OFF, and leave at 5:30 to pick up the laundry and find John's been using my "good" white towels for come cloths! Damn! Dinner and dishes and John goes off to something called "Ying-Yang" that I'm not interested in, work from 7:15 to 8:30, getting GREAT things done with the index, and then watch "Strindberg" on Biographies, rather poor, with more from his PLAYS than from his life, though the excerpts are well done, though all the women LOOK alike even though they aren't, and then watch a fairly boring Walt Whitman reading, during which John comes in, having left during intermission, saying there were "some interesting things," but it didn't hold his interest. I get back to work from 10 to 10:30, then he's going to bed, so I shower and get into bed, but can't sleep, so I'm up to smoke, back to bed, feel excited, up to get VERY excited, get poppers, and come with 32 spasms, stoned out of skull, then across for cookies and milk and THEN back to sleep about midnight. Can't get to bed early if I WANT to.
DIARY 4084
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. Wake at 7:30 and lay until John wakes and gets out of bed at 7:50. Start working in the comparative coolness of the morning at 7:55, and work through until 12:15, getting HUNDREDS of cards done, through page 277, over half finished with the pages, and through 1000 cards. John goes down to get the mail and sadly there are no checks from either Rita or HBJ, so we quarrel about the money I owe Anita and he forces me to see that I HAVE been thoughtless toward her, and I vow to write her a note of apology when JOHN sends her the money from HIS account. I have $150 in the checking account and $40 in the savings account and $50 cash and $74 in the kitty, which DOES add up to $314, more than his $310 check, but I don't think it's worth scraping up ONLY to pay her. But John IS concerned about her. He ALSO brings up the pages for the book, and I'm delighted that I don't have to do ALL repaging, but when I get into it, I find that from pages 250 onward are ALL messed up, so I have to call him on Tuesday and sort things out, and settle into a blue funk about now HAVING to repage everything, which was what I had to do BEFORE, but I had a TASTE of not doing it, and the greed overwhelms me now. Work from 1 to 2:40, six hours for the day, and just CAN'T get back into it, and figure that I've worked 73¼ hours ANYWAY this week, and so I give myself the luxury of getting some of the things OFF my TO DO list, and get started on the stamps first, and while soaking them a GREAT rainstorm comes up, but it doesn't do much to cool off the general atmosphere. They take ages to dry, and some mint stamps from the US get sadly stuck together, but I finish about 8, after dinner, and John's gone out to the movies and I stay at home and finish stamps, and then scour the tub when he gets in with the Times (which I'd forgotten I'd asked him to get, so it was good he came in THEN), and we sit and read it until he gets to bed at 10:30, and I figure to follow him in a BIT, but then get involved in the puzzles at 11, and simply stay awake until 12:15 working BOTH the acrostic AND the crossword completely, and then rather kick myself, but STILL feel satisfied about it.
DIARY 4087
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. [Is it REALLY September already?] Wake tired, and John's up so I have to get up and get over to hack away more on the "To Do" list, but we leave about 8:30 to BICYCLE (and here I thought we were going to DRIVE) to Prospect Park to look for mushrooms, but though the ride is pleasant, and we spend time in the Zoo until it officially opens and gets rather crowded at 10, watching necking hippos in water, being looked at jealously by a lone rhino and a pair of elephants with hemorrhoids who drink from the HIPPO water rather than depleting their own supply, we don't find anything but a half-dozen moldy slimy fungi that John even thinks to collect, and ONE gilled tall one that we decide we can't identify, and it goes VERY soft VERY fast in my back bag. First time on the bicycle this year, good to fill the tires once, at least. Back at 10:30 and I start on the Harper and Row test, getting it all finished and into the envelope, then go through the top drawer and find all the things I have to work on: write a letter to Latham publishers asking if they still want me to fill out their test, write to Random House for the Ballantine refund, truly answer NBC that I got the prizes from "Who, What, Where," and sort out the dance pieces for Inter-Action, and then get out the God-Piece (which suddenly looks like COD-piece) for Elaine and write HER a note after I finish, sending her John's French poem and my agents' gifts, and then decide to get one LAST thing off the list before dinner, putting the letter file away. Half through and have a dinner, large, of cold awful noodles, cold chicken and beef that taste strangely alike until I decide since they're both cold they don't SMELL, and it's like eating food with a cold: relatively tasteless. And TWO ears of GOOD corn, which fill me up so much I can't eat part of the chicken. But that doesn't stop me from stuffing myself tonight when we go to Rockaway Park (see next pages). Put the rest of the letters away and do the dishes while John goes out for a walk, and I shave and shower and brush my teeth as he returns at 8:10, and as we drive on the Belt, it's 8:25 and 90°, MUCH too much, and John's FINALLY emptied out the bug-infested terrarium bowl. Come.
DIARY 4090
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. Wake late and do heaven knows what until 10:10, when I get back to the index---maybe we have sex, maybe I read more of the Sunday Times, maybe I have breakfast, I think I DO exercise again. Work to lunch at 12:30, then back at 12:55 and go to 6:05, when I have dinner, and wash the dishes, and go from 6:55 to 8, when I take off to watch "The Scarlet Letter" on TV, and it's silly, because it has the SAME organ passages that it did for the OTHER silent films, and one strongly reminds me of something that I remember from the Lon Chaney "He Who Gets Slapped." Then back over at 9:30 and finish up at 10:20. Oh, another thing that I did in the morning was type three diary pages, so that I'm up to date with them again. Someone calls during the day, but I forget who, and I talk for a bit, but spend 9.5 hours today working, on Labor Day. Feel very self-pitying for working all the time, particularly when John goes out three or four times in the day to take a walk, ride his bicycle, or cruise. He decides he DOES have enough money in his checking account to pay Anita, but I have to type him up a [no, dammit, this was Saturday!]. Depressed at this very moment because I'm so far behind, and there are so many things I want to do, AND I have to spend at least 10 hours on the copyediting for HBJ before 4 pm Wednesday, and tonight I'm going to the movies, and Tuesday I'm going to the movies, and I don't really FEEL like doing more than the 5 hours I did today. It takes a LOT more concentration than proofreading or indexing, and her statement that she wants me to USE lots of commas, which conflict with someone with an orange pencil taking OUT many of the commas I would have thought she would have wanted, so I'm really not sure WHERE I'm going. Probably I should call her tomorrow with a LIST of question TYPES and get some response from her. Well, THAT makes me feel better, a perfect example of the cathartic, psychoanalytic, and helpful aspects of these pages---but I want them to have BOTH a value to me AND a value to others, so I STILL want to get them published even though I benefit when I do them! Bed fairly early, tired.
DIARY 4091
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. Up and exercise and get to the office by 9 am, quite a feat, though it seems VERY empty. I call Frank Giroux who says "Send it back with YOUR numbers on it," and I go to the 69¢ shop and buy three albums by Shankar, Shostakovich, and Gluck, then to another place to buy Sensodyne, then to the expensive Rexall, which has the Sensodyne for 30¢ MORE, to buy salt tablets for the ridiculous price of 81¢. But that's two MORE items off the list of things to do, and I'm caught up through the 10th, which is a nice cushion. Write a letter to Mom, being pushed from one typewriter to a second, chatting with the new temp who says she's not only a freelance editor and writer who has to type to earn enough money, but she's also a freelance actress, too, and I'm surely better off than SHE is. Tell her I spent 10 years at IBM, and then in the afternoon Diane asks me if I'm 30, which I think is a bit MUCH of a coincidence, Write a letter to Bill, working away on another item on the list, and then Dick Sime comes in at 1:20 with some unit book blues, JUST in time for me to have lunch and read many pages of the just-started "Remembrance of Things Past." Look at the blues and find lots of things wrong with them, chat with Marge when she comes in about 2, and borrow $10 from her since I spent almost everything for the albums and have nothing left for stamps. Leave at 5:15 to get to the Post Office to pick up the registered mail, things, too, and sign out at 5:30. Get there for another coin, and the stamp man has NO commemorative stamps, but sells me a "plate block" of 20 8-cent stamps, quite a gyp on the part of the government, I think, and even HE says he doesn't know why they did it that way. But I have to go BACK again to get the commemoratives both John and I want. Also retype the Pilobolus article for Mattachine at work. Home and eat and talk with John about his rapidly-nearing-completion article, and work on the index from 8:10 to 8:30, when I'm across to watch the blatantly "upcoming-series" "made-for-TV" film "The Six Million Dollar Man" (cheap at TWICE the price) which they TOTALLY wreck, then work a bit more from 9:55 to 10:45, and get tired into bed. Can't sleep, so I'm up to smoke and write what's on the NEXT pages---
DIARY 4094
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. Forgot that Mrs. Johnson called at 10:45 to stop my stamping with the numbering device I borrowed from the gal on the 15th floor at work, chatting with Celia to be sure I didn't offend her, and I tell Mrs. Johnson, "Should I start at 7:30?" and she says "You can start at 7, but not now, it's too hot and I'm irritable." Kind of her to admit the problem. So I'm up at 7:45 and stamp away to 8:45, and it even bothers JOHN. Hang around until 9:30 exercising and showering, and then off to the Post Office to BUY the stamps I want to, $13 worth, and STILL don't have enough money left for today! Mail stuff to DC for $2.20, happy to get it out of MY hair once more, and get to work at 10:30 and get Codemaster---sorry, The Codemaster---copyediting from Fraya. Hassle with Fraya and Shirley Blumenthal over Larry Mace. Do not much, and leave at 3:30, getting the $10 back to Marge JUST as she comes in the door, and steam through the hot walks to pick up the Dell Pomeroy index at $5 an hour, having to get it back next Wednesday, and meet Jo Satloff, who confuses me no end with her commas, for a $4.50 an hour Cost Accounting book, leaving at 5:10 after seeing that Pam Goett had left already. Debate walking, but the heat and heft of the briefcase prevent me, so I subway up to 77th and walk over to the Tip-Top on Second, sitting in the cool, fairly empty place until John gets there at 5:45, and I tell him that Eddie said the theater was flooded and had a rectifier burnt out, so we're due at Trans-Lux 85th at 7:30. Pork and green peppers nice from both plates, and we're out quick to walk across in the FINALLY COOLING air to sit alongside the park for a bit watching all the bicycles going past, and then to "Last Tango in Paris," which gives us something to talk about for awhile until John's "definitive" description of interchanging personalities on a musical base which permits multitudes of unconnected details, and we subway home, reading our own things, and shower and get into bed for the first time in AGES not having to have the fan blowing on us, and it was only 8 days of over 90° heat, surpassed by 9 days in 1966 and 12 days in 1953---so no record at ALL.
DIARY 4095
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. To work at 9, again not having enough time to exercise, barely having time to cuddle with John before I bounce out of bed, and have ANOTHER copyediting fuss with Anne Herrick, Shirley, Fraya, and GINNY and Dick before Ginny decides to TELL me what should be capitalized and trademarked, etc, which SHOULD be common style, and get three chapters to Fraya for typing. Ginny then gives me proofreading that I do for Codemaster before I finish the stuff for Fraya, and Barry gets a base conversion lesson, and Dror and I talk about Russian novelists, and Rolf Houkum calls and TALKED about stocks for about 45 minutes and recommends getting an over-the-counter thing which was at 5, is now at 7, called COMTEN. And I wander around talking about "Last Tango" with Diane and Dror and Ginny and anyone ELSE who'll talk about it. Missed Alice this week, but she'll be back NEXT, and there'll be someone ELSE to talk to. Leave at 5:30, almost finished with the copyediting, and Ginny says she's getting someone ELSE for proofreading tomorrow. Great, leaves me off the hook. Get home to eat and decide to go to the Club Baths tonight since the weekend should (but it turns out NOT to be) be enough time to finish what I have to finish by Wednesday, but want to watch "Wind Raiders of the Sahara," and get over to do odds and ends, and Arnie calls to say goodbye for his trip, since Norma's aunt died and she's leaving TOMORROW and he's leaving on Saturday, and watch the TV program, which leads me to the short-short on the next page (see next page), and then I smoke at 9 (John went out to see his cute friend Frank, came back sadly to announce that he wasn't there, but then he returned to leave a note, and Frank came back from the barbershop and they had fun together, possibly coming over HERE next for ME to meet) and go VERY dizzily out to the Baths with the new grass, and John says he's been mixing bidi with EVERYTHING. The evening is VERY pleasant (see following page), and I get back for my ritual cookies and milk, and am SO hungry that I CONTINUE with a bowl of CEREAL, feeling silly, but the food DOES feel good in my stomach, and I ONLY weigh 147 pounds ANYWAY. So THERE.
DIARY 4099
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7. Stop in the "cheap" coffee shop on 29th and end up paying 90¢ for a cup of coffee, a bow tie, and a ring for lunch, since I ate the last of the cookies last night. Absolutely ridiculous, and Ron says that the rolls downstairs are 25¢, but that the coffee is LESS than 20¢, except that it's probably a smaller cup. Edit and type the historically-speaking Kameny article, and talk with Anne Herrick about Russia. Finish copyediting and give it to Fraya and have nothing more to do for the rest of the day. Win at Scrabble, write a letter to Edgardo without putting on the greeting and signature until I'm out of the office, and have nothing more to do, so I read from 4 to 5:30, squeezing the last bit of time out of the 29½ hour week, STILL not good enough for the money I need, though the check FINALLY came through from my sister for $300, and I signed it IMMEDIATELY over to John to pay my debt to him, and then the $105 came in from Pam Goett's job after EXACTLY two weeks in the mill, and the check from "Who, What, Where" for $10 finally came in, too. So the only letters I have still to write are to Peter and Rita, and I check through the files to see what she means about me writing not to her, and her sending two letters to my one, and she's just not right. But then she takes so LONG to write one of her letters! It's blessedly cool at last, and everyone's writing up their final articles about the THIRD LONGEST HEAT WAVE IN NEW YORK CITY, which isn't really THAT spectacular, especially since we'd have to go 50% longer to even TIE the current record: from 8 to 12 days. John wants to see something by Betti (The Gambler), but I look him up in my books and he seems minor, so I put all the letters into their envelopes and fuss around with my drawers until it's time to watch "The Beguiled" on TV, and quite a show it is, with poor Clint Eastwood losing his leg to the knife of Geraldine Page and then his LIFE to the mushrooms picked by some innocent little girl. John's in before it's over at 1, and we get into bed, and I'm so tired that I DO go to sleep without any smoking, the first time in AGES, happy that at least it's STILL possible to do so.
DIARY 4100
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. Wake at 8:15 (because I'd put earplugs in to stop the woman upstairs from tromping on my BRAIN) and start working at 8:35 on the Dell Pomeroy index of "Your Child and Sex" and I try a combination of paper and cards which really doesn't work too well, since I have to type the sheet once, and get lots of things out of order, then have to go through the book THREE times: once for a rough glance, second to get MOST of the entries, and the third time to catch up on various terms that it's obvious SHOULD be in but which weren't in the first card-typing pass. Then have to type the rough draft, do lots of editing, and then work on the final version. Work until 12:15, and have lunch, then from 12:35 until 6:15, when I have dinner and wash dishes and talk to Arnie, and then from 7:10 to 9:45, while John reads John Wyndham books to pass the time, since I didn't want to go to the movies TONIGHT, and I AGAIN feel that I'm keeping him in, and feel loving toward him for the slight twinge of guilt that I feel---and speaking of twinges, it reminds me that yesterday and today, from thinking about going to the dentist, my teeth have begun to twinge, and just as I'm typing this, I find that the lower left last molar is cracked, so I have SOMETHING to do before I go to Russia. Over at 9:45 to shower and brush my teeth, and John's gone for the Times AGAIN, and I start reading it as he watches "An American Family" and THEN continues on at 11 to watch an hour of "The Scarlet Letter," while I read ALL the paper, including the article in the Magazine about the halves of the brain that is SO incredible, and then start on the Puns and Twists, getting almost down to the final corner before I get the idea, and then the whole thing begins to fall out, so that it's almost finished by the time John gets tired and goes to bed at 12. Again I don't have to smoke (though he's been doing it), and just put in the earplugs to stop her HIDEOUS tromping upstairs, and get into bed to fall asleep not only under the SHEET, but also under the SPREAD. OH, and we had SEX this morning, he not coming because he got numb, but he brought me off NICELY with Baby Magic. It IS nice to have sex.
DIARY 4103
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. [Two weeks behind AGAIN, because John's going away LAST weekend made it so strange that I didn't type ANYTHING in the diary over the weekend.] Finish the two puzzles in the morning, because I'd started them the evening before, and then got started on the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich "Cost Accounting" book copyediting at 10:45, and go through it VERY slowly until 12:30, when we have lunch, and work from 1-4:15, still only about 6 pages per hour, and with absolutely no confidence that I'm doing the right thing. Very discouraging kind of work. John wanted to go to the films tonight, so we eat at 6 and get out at 6:45 for "Eagle in a Cage," which wasn't the one I wanted to see, and I think that he's on Elba for the last exile, but it turns out that he's on St. Helena, way down in the middle of the Atlantic, and the setting was grim enough that it may actually have been FILMED there. Rather a boring film until the marvelously funny, coarse, womanizing John Gielgud comes on in a saving set of scenes with the over-pompous Ralph Richardson, and then the film that I WANTED to see, "Royal Hunt of the Sun" starts out of focus and STAYS out of focus despite everyone clapping for focus, and going back to complain to the management. Finally two guys think they can help, but by that time it's 10 pm and John's tired enough to want to go home, and we get a free pass to ANOTHER showing, so essentially we saw the one show free, only for the discomfort of coming into town to see a film we really DIDN'T want to see. Back at 10:30, and he's in bed fairly quickly, and I sit up to watch the David Susskind show with two male and two female homosexual "married" couples, including the couple from Minnesota who HAVE a judge's marriage license and will be trying a joint income tax return. The other men were priest-married in Manhattan's gay church, and the women seemed a bit behind, WANTING to get married but not realizing they COULD. GREAT program in that the audience was gay and openly responsive, and the RANGE of gays on the SHOW gave a richness to the movement that, I think, would help the VIEWER to appreciate the richness of the homosexual society. Bed VERY tired when it's over at 1:30, and I may have come AFTER that, too.
DIARY 4104
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. Get to work at 9. Talk to Alice, and find that Kierkegaard has been thrown OUT, though later in the week I find that it's only the SECOND half that's been cancelled; they'll be selling the FIRST half that they've already produced. At 10:15 I get the Bees unit, the only one written by Lewis Eigen himself, which started at 25 pages, Ron cut it to 20, and I'm to cut it to 15. Call Rosey for an examination time, and it's at 9 am TOMORROW morning, which is nice because I don't have time to FRET about it. Work on the Bees to 11:30, and Ginny brings stuff to proofread and FRAYA takes it for her TEMPORARY person, and I have nothing to do. Practice Problem Q13-5 revised from 11:30 to 12:30, and play fast Scrabble that I win. Out at 2 to 2:45 to Grand Central for passport pictures, but it's a two-hour wait and much too expensive. Try to find others in the phone book, and out at 3 to THINK it's the same expensive rate as the one in Grand Central, since it's the SAME company, and sit for the shots for a longish time and find it's even MORE expensive, but the shot's been taken, I've taken my TIME, so that's the way it GOES, but I'm disgusted with the whole thing. Stop at Basic Books to pick up a HUGE index to be proofread, and back at 4. Larry Mace not in as scheduled, so I'm up to Rodelinde Albrecht and get TWO indexes, one for 860 pages on Accounting, one for 650 pages from Sarah Parker on music, and I talk to HER from 4:45-5:30. WHEW, it's been a busy day, and I still have LOTS to do before going to the Adirondacks. Sign out of work at 5:45, the start of a 39-hour week, and home to dinner and watch "Love" with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert from 8 to 10, and John leaves during the last part of it, and they change the basic plot of "Anna Karenina" so that Karenin DIES and they're reunited, obviously to marry and grow up happily together. Don't know what happens to the rest of the evening, but we don't have sex: John probably goes to bed early and I smoke to keep dentist thoughts away, and I stay up to get out the sex book and LEAVE it under the little table so that it's readily available, and come with feeling, probably, the way only I can pull it off with MY special touch.
DIARY 4105
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. Set the alarm just to make SURE I get up in time for the dentist, but I don't need it, up at 7:30 and get everything ready and out at 8:20 to get onto an express that CHANGES TO A LOCAL at 96th, which makes it convenient indeed for the ride up, and she cleans, says that my gums look bad enough that she prescribes some chewable antibiotics to clear up my gum infection, and takes X-rays for the first time in TWO years to see what's up. She asks if there's anything wrong, and point to the "crack" in back, but she says it's only an interface, and files it down, though even with THAT I can feel a twinge of nerve ending, and I DON'T tell her about the vague feeling that I've gotten once or twice in my upper right jaw, or in my lower left jaw. Assume the X-rays will show that something's wrong. Get into the office at 10, and Larry Mace is in at 10:15, and we go over the write-up from 10:15 to 11. Suddenly I have a lot of work to do. Proofread the Bees unit, infuriatingly retyped DOUBLE space, which takes EXACTLY the 20 pages I was trying to reduce it FROM, put in a page for retyping, check technical art, teach Barry MORE about base 5, which he can't seem to get, to 1. Hassle with layout of the pages TO be typed and the pages ALREADY typed, and Tom Aloisi makes ALL the wrong judgments, backed by Fraya. Peter Rooney calls to say that most of my indexing points are OK, and Sarah Parker calls to say that some of the pages are misnumbered. I call Jo Satloff to say that I'll be bringing in TWO chapters because I'm so uncertain about my progress, but actually I just don't have the TIME to finish them. Incredible arguments with everyone about the Codemaster write-ups, and I'm convinced it's going to look just AWFUL, but it's not really MY problem. Out at 5:30 and meet John at Jade Mountain at 5:45 for a pretty awful dinner, and down to St. Marks for "Ludwig" a very SAD movie, and I'm glad I saw the castles BEFORE I saw the film, and "Tristana," again the epitome of Spanish down-in-the-mouthness. Out at 11, feeling tied, and subway home to probably feel tired enough to go to sleep WITHOUT the typical help of a pipeful of grass to stop my mind.
DIARY 4106
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. Into work at 9, have a meeting with Tom about the write-up, on the phone with Larry Mace and compromise everything to make it DIFFERENT but as good as can be with the typed 70 pages NOT redone, though they're in SAD shape. Letters will be ITALIC in text, lower case in tables, lower case UNDERLINED in Level b, UPPER case in Level A. Great. Something I can feel proud of. Get some of the forms to Fraya for typing for photographing, and then work from 10:45 to 2:45 on the COST ACCOUNTING copyediting, since I MUST be finished for this afternoon. Leave at 2:50 for my errands, signing out at 3, and get FIRST to the photographic shop where I get my pictures, SECOND to Basic Books, which is Harper and Row, nice, to Ruth Rozman to sign the photographs after cutting them down to the right size (I hope), getting ANOTHER thing out of the way on the TO DO list, and decide I really can't take EITHER of the indexes she has to be done, but say that I'll be waiting to hear from her for more. THIRD to Dell and take back the Pomeroy index, and George Ryan, like Ruth, compliments me on being ON TIME with something that looks GOOD to them, and George tries to get me to take some other freelance stuff, but I say that the PAY isn't so good, so I'll just hold off for indexing, and he says that, being Dell with books like hardcore pornography, there aren't too many of them, so I say that's OK and go to HBJ for my FOURTH meeting of the afternoon, and Jo Satloff ISN'T going to be so appreciative, cutting through my words, insisting I have to write bigger and neater, saying I have to take BACK the first two chapters and she adds a fourth, saying I have to be back by Wednesday, and I FORGET to tell her about my vacation to the Adirondacks. Busy day, but I've PAID the check for the Russia trip, and have my tasks finished through the 15th, when John will be gone and I can catch up with OTHERS. Home at 5:45 and talk for a long time with John about his now-finished article, and do the dishes and get over for a University of Hawaii production of "Narukami" a Kabuki play which is rather fetching, and it lasts to 11:30, and AGAIN it's a tired me to bed.
DIARY 4107
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. To work at 8:45, with relief that I don't have any of MY work to hold me up, and Fraya's been screaming for work FROM me to keep her stable of typists busy. Work ALL day on the copyediting, and Fraya decides to RETYPE Level A pages, so that's twice as much work for me to come up with the right FORMS, and now Level B has to be redone, since it was made SOMEWHAT poor to coincide with Level A, but since Level A can now be made good, B AND A have to be specified anew. She was ALSO proven wrong on typing the sheets WITHOUT putting the paragraph titles out in the margin, which I said I liked, so SHE begins to respect my judgment, too. Chat with Alice about "True Spirits" and Bernie about IBM, and play a scoreless Scrabble game with Ellen Sabin, who's supposed to be pretty good, but she sometimes just throws down letters without really being interested in them, so I don't see her that way. Enough work to keep me going until 5:45, for an 8½ hour day, and I'm home to eat and get over to the Club Baths for the 5th time, from 8 to 11:30. Get home to write the following note to myself: "Seems I'm not a very GIVING person. Oh, of my time or my typing (for Mattachine or Elaine) OK, but not giving of MYSELF. This CUTE little hairy-chested beauty enjoyed SO much kissing me and sucking on my hard cock, but I wanted HIM to come, wanted HIM to give me HIMself before I gave him MYself. How selfish, and he gave his come to SOMEONE else, big and bulky, who tried to get me, too, but I moved away. HE was a taker, too, I guess, though he TRIED to give to the fat guy in the smaller orgy room. Lots of people I know: John Pascarelli, John A., Peter Rooney, the freelance Bob Kelly (I think so, anyway) from ACC, Paul, the small guy from Tsi-Dun. ALL kinds of people. Said "Hi" to Peter Rooney, but he stared past me as if maybe he didn't have his contacts in, or maybe he didn't WANT to acknowledge that we were both there. Thought it might be a slow evening, but I started out by not being able, really, to push Paul away, and he KEPT on hanging onto me, and I felt, somehow, that it enhanced my standing to be attacked by this slender young body, so I suffered it
DIARY 4109
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. Get to work at 9 and work on the copyediting ALL day, having enough to keep me busy until 7:15, when I leave to meet Marge in the hall, wet with rain, and down to a downpour through which I walk TOO far to get to the 7th Avenue train when I could have settled for the Sixth Avenue train up CPW. Up to 96th in cold winds, and walk across to their apartment with drenched feet, and in to a vodka tonic and great shredded cheese that John picked up on Atlantic Avenue (while getting me "Sara Lee Syrienne" for desserts for the next week), and we talk about the position of the modern musician in society as opposed to the court-supported performers of the past, John talks about his paper, and then Lucy Harms, whom I'd suspected didn't cook very well since she'd never had us over for dinner, came out with the honeydews FILLED with fruit and nuts and figs and shrimp and a DELICIOUS sauce and water chestnuts, and when it almost felt that THIS was the meal (and the wine was good, too), out came the light chicken in a WHITE sauce which was fabulous, with fresh green beans and good rice, and then dessert was a MOST fabulous chocolate mousse with cream to go over it, and we had Grand Marnier as we sat around the table talking, they got out the photographs that they'd taken at the mountain we climbed, and we talked ON and ON about the jobs we were doing, the performances they were playing, the plans they had, about childhood experiences, and about how different WE are, how John cares for the plants and does the cooking, while I keep the records and souvenirs in place. Delightful evening even though I can't remember all we talked about, and John talked about how he was going away for five days, and I was wondering how it would affect me. Lucy talked about her grandfather's death, how her aunt lived with another woman for so many years, we talked about longevity and how long WE wanted to live, and John rattled away until I saw poor Ben and Lucy nodding about to SLEEP before I said that it was 12:30, and we really DID have to go, getting into our rainsuits again, and thanking them for a MARVELOUS evening, feeling as good there as we hoped they felt HERE.
DIARY 4110
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. Wake about 8, feeling groggy from the late night and slightly hung over from all the wine and Grand Marnier of last night, and John, seemingly in deference to his going away, seems to want to have sex, so we start cuddling and he gets out the Baby Magic, but it really doesn't work, and HE has trouble coming, and I have trouble coming, so finally we just do it ourselves, leaving a slightly bitter taste about his going off. He wanted to leave at 8 and finally leaves about 9:30, and I want to catch up on some things on my TO DO list, so I put up the towel rack, which is easy and quick and item number 16, which means I'm again ahead of schedule, but only by the smallest possible margin. Later in the day I get a bill from Rosey which says my X-rays are negative, so that takes care of 17, I shower and cut my hair, so that's 18, and I phone for reservations for "Coming Out," so that's 19, and I'm ahead to the middle of next week, and I don't fear being able to do LOTS of things this weekend. What an ERROR. Read through the Voice and find that I have TWO double features to see this weekend, but figure that maybe "Coming Out" will be over soon enough that I can catch the last double at the Quad, which will leave only ONE day's time taken up with another double. Start back on the Cost Accounting editing at 10, and work through till 1:30, again moving later because John isn't here, have lunch, and back at 2:45 to 5:15, for a small total of 6 hours today, and eat soup WITHOUT meat, because I don't get any for myself, and thought there was rabbit in the soup, but it was only a pig's knuckle with ONE tiny bit of dog-cock-red meat. Out at 6:45 to pick up the ticket at 7:15, reading all the reviews while I wait for the performance, and it's BUSY and CROWDED (see next page). Out at 9:30 and down to the Quad to find it's filled up, but then get a seat for the end of "The Devil in Miss Jones," so that I can RE-see the snake-in-mouth, grapes-in-cunt, lesbian come-lap, and double-come-on-balls scenes AGAIN, and "Women in Revolt" IS revolting, with Jackie Curtis taking the ugly-cake, Candy Darling not really BAD-looking, and out at 1, home to COME with bells on and books all over the bed and grass and poppers and porno. Miss John ALREADY.
DIARY 4112
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16. Sleep late, don't feel like getting out of bed with no one to get out of bed WITH, finally up at 9:45 and work from 10 to 11, have breakfast, watch program about Liszt on Camera Three with a simpery Faubian Bowers "presenting" a sexy Joseph Villa on piano in blue velvet. 11:30-1:30 work again, then lunch, and work 2:30-6, when I have dinner again almost meatless, after watching the skating spectacular and Alistair Cooke's "America," where I took the following notes: Indians came ONLY as late as 15,000 BC, with over 500 languages, some of whom worshipped matriarchs. Vikings, Phoenicians, and Jewish coming to America are NOT indisputable, so he starts with Columbus: red wine was a laxative. August 3, 1492, they left, October 12, they landed in San Salvador in the Bahamas. SECOND trip brought 17 ships and 1500 men looking for GOLD! FIRST French were Bretons in Nova Scotia in 1507 after FUR! 1540, Coronado went from Mexico to Kansas, conquered the Acoma Pueblo, where the first name was carved in 1605. Santa Fe VERY old town. 1678 de la Salle, Ontario, to 1682, down the Mississippi to New Orleans, through "Louisiana." St. Genevieve, Missouri, is totally FRENCH, preserved as of old: San Xavier del Bac, a Papago-Spanish CHURCH of great age. He finished up with Lafayette, saying that the "losers" of the US were the French and Spanish, and NEXT week, he goes on to talk about the British at Jamestown. Good first program with INTERESTING places depicted that will come in handy on future trips. Then eat from 8 to 9, reading, leaving the dishes in the sink, and work from 9-12, putting in 9½ hours, though still wishing John were around. Again set up the books and the grass and the bed, luxuriating in having the LIGHT on while smoking and pulling my pud, but it doesn't quite work out, and I have to wet it and waggle away with it, and finally comes with great energy but little feeling, and sleep in the MIDDLE of the bed and wake up, instinct having taken over, on MY side of the bed, under an extra blanket because it's getting COLD outside already, so SOON after the awful heat spell. Weary of being alone, hungry (had popcorn during show).
DIARY 4113
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. [John IS a good influence: last week, when he was gone, and I didn't feel like typing, I DIDN'T. NOW, when he's here, and I don't AT ALL feel like typing, I CONTINUE, merely because he's HERE, and I want to show HIM that I have self-control more than I want to show MYSELF.] Because I was into bed so late I don't get into work until 9:30, rather tired. Work on copyediting. Hung up on Larry Mace not being home for the LAST form's questions. Call Jo Satloff, saying that I'll be in on Wednesday or Thursday (I'd even had to make up a QUICK LIST of six things that I had to do today and tomorrow, so much did I hate to add to my "official" TO DO list that SHOULD, I figured, stop at 30, since September only HAS 30 days!), telling her about my vacation, and she seems disturbed about it, but not crushingly so. Call Frank Giroux, and he says that Wendy will be back NEXT Monday, and I'll be getting the pages THEN. Obviously, though I decide I really can't tell them in ADVANCE, since I really MIGHT NOT get it before that week is over, I won't be getting the pages to them in 10 days because of the Adirondacks weeks. WORK IS CERTAINLY MONOPOLIZING MY THOUGHTS THESE PAST FEW WEEKS, AND NOTHING about writing!!! Check for editorial corrections to units to 5:30, work ALL day, for a change, saving up goodness for the REST of the week, when I do QUITE a bit of my own stuff. Work till 5:30 and get home to shop for hamburgers which turn out to be mealy and awful, and eat dinner and watch a mediocre "Night of the Following Day" with Brando looking fetching in short blond hair and black turtlenecks with a nice sexy body profile, with the amusing ending of her "dream" on the plane seeming about to come TRUE of being kidnapped. TV from 8-10, then work on the book from 10 to 12:30, when I can't stand it anymore, and I don't REALLY want to come, but I don't really NOT want to come, so I do it very quickly just to get it over with. Washed the dishes tonight, too, since I was running out of forks and had to clean the tuna container, and do the dishes tomorrow, too, to clean up before John gets back on Wednesday. Keep the place looking FAIRLY good: a TINY chance he might get back a day EARLY if he's bored at the Warner's in Lewisburg.
DIARY 4114
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. Again to work only at 9:30, edit the Bees unit script against the UNITBOOK, which had never been done, and Lewis Eigen was STUPID in a number of things. Larry Mace in at 12, checks the book to 2:30, and I wolf down FAST lunch while working, and get out at 3:15 to see the double feature at the St. Marks, after standing outside until 3:40 so that I won't see the END of "Frenzy," though it's not a Whodunit, but Willybecaught? Shout to Jerry Steinhart that I'LL QUIT if he moves me out of my private office into my "13th seat" which is a bit of an exaggeration, but it doesn't have any effect ANYWAY. "Day of the Jackal" is a good old movie-movie with suspense and twists, though the FINAL twist that he wasn't even the Charles Calthorp (which I thought was a VERY convincing production of Cha-Cal---Jackal) they THOUGHT he was led me to skim back over the rest of the movie in my head (even during some of the more boring moments of "Frenzy") to see how they could have got the RIGHT guy starting out with the WRONG clue, but it turned on the rather RIDICULOUS thing of "Well, if his passport's HERE, he must have ANOTHER passport, so check all passports drawn to DEAD people," and THAT lead to him directly. But THAT was precisely the step which was the hardest to swallow! But the ins and outs of James Fox were pleasant to follow, particularly when he had his shirt off, or was VERY fetchingly draped in Delphine Seyrig's bed. "Frenzy" is pretty good, though the looks on the strangled girls' faces were a bit TOO funny, and out at 8. Home to eat at 8:30, debating whether to go to the baths, and AGAIN the BOTH/ AND philosophy wins out: if I HAVE to finish the book at work, I WILL, so why SHOULDN'T I spend this night the way I want to, and also give myself the chance to "suck one for me," as John ordered me to? Oh, paid my rent by check yesterday when Mrs. Gray called me to do so, and saw a "Face of the Year" this morning on the subway (see next page). Also, take 10 minutes to finish the LAST 10 pages of "Swann's Way," Volume 1 of the Septology done in less than 2 weeks. So as late as 10, after showering and smoking, I get out to the baths (see following page).
DIARY 4117
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19. Almost decide NOT to go to work, but go in to find that my desk IS moved later in the morning, and I finish the copyediting at 12:45, and start in on Cost Accounting at 12:45, working through lunch, asking assorted questions about units and the write-up of Codemaster, and do 38 pages from 1:30 to 5:30, having called to say that I'll be in to HBJ TOMORROW, leaving a message, easier than telling JO. Get back with the thought in the back of my mind that John might NOT be home yet, so I'm not TOO surprised to find that I have to bring up the mail for the FOURTH day. Sit down to work at 6:20, and John comes in at 6:21, makes himself a drink, says there was a lot of traffic on the new route 80, which is almost completed by now, and talking about the pleasures of his trip: meeting Joseph Campbell, 70-year-old philosopher-husband of Jean Erdman, and his annoyance with the children, Tom's closedness and fear of talking, his openness with Kathy and her missing of MY coming to talk with her, and his meals there, the people they invited over to dinner, Kathy's interest in practically everything, and his delight with Topsy hunting mushrooms in the woods, finding things that he couldn't identify. Then we get out to J & E Spanish restaurant on Henry and Atlantic, that John wanted, and I don't find it that good, though there's a large half-pitcher of Sangria to make things nicer. Back at 9 to smoke and have sex on the sofa, and he seems to want to come quickly, so he does himself and I do myself all over him, but that seems to please him, and Dick's interrupting about his sending me the Mattachine Times stuff to type doesn't seem to bother him. Finished at 10, feeling QUITE pooped out, and start watching "Black Dragon Residence" on TV, from the University of Hawaii, enjoying the lengthy face-painting process, but the acting isn't up to the painting, and the voices aren't NEARLY as powerful as they should be, so I turn it off wearily about 10:30 and crawl into bed, officially fall-equipped now with a new blanket spread over it, and we actually change bedclothes tomorrow, the first time since we got back from EUROPE---isn't two months a BIT long to go without?
DIARY 4118
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. With John to get up early, I manage to get to work at 9, since I have about 30 more pages to do before I get to HBJ at 4 this afternoon. Work steadily from 9:15 to 12:15, getting enough finished so that I can take off 1½ hours for Scrabble game that Ron wins JUST as I thought it was about time that he won a game to make him feel good about playing with me and to take his mind away from where it probably isn't anyway: on the fact that I'm doing more of MY work this week than HIS, or even Fraya's. Work on my stuff again from 2:15 to 3:15, and then I leave at 3:30, hoping to get there maybe a bit early, and Jo comes back to her office at 3:55, and we go through most of the flags, and she agrees with MOST of the stuff, but there are still awful mistakes that I make in editing to change the meaning that she rightfully takes out. But MANY of the things that I do SHE agrees are HER errors, and when she gives me the new stuff and I ask how many pages it is, she goes to look it up and I quickly count the last three pages of each chapter and suggest "166 pages?" JUST as she finds it should be 166 pages, and she squeaks "Don't DO that, you always DO that," and I feel that my "charisma" is beginning to get through to her. She's actually canoed on Blue Mountain Lake and stayed in the lean-tos "between husbands" and I leave at five feeling very good. Even get home early and tell John that I'm thinking of the baths again, and HE says he was thinking of having Frank over. OK. Eat and dishes and shower and shave and put in contacts, and type two pages stoned (4101-4102), and Frank comes at 8:10 and he's QUITE cute, trying to be intellectual and SOMETIMES succeeding, and then we're over to smoke and we attack him with gentleness from both sides, and he grins and seems to like it, then into the bedroom, and he's hard but smelly initially, and JOHN takes off the smegma and then I go down on his nicely modeled cock, and his BODY is very pleasant, slender but defined, and John does himself, I do MYSELF with such gusto that I stop the evening, we have popcorn, watch the TV colors, GREAT, and then John brings off Frank while I watch his handsome face contort with pleasure mingled with a look of pain. Lovely body, pity I probably won't be seeing it again.
DIARY 4119
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. Up at 7:30 and manage to get to work by 8:50 before anyone else shows up, so I sign in at 8:30, getting to the rest of the editing in the afternoon when I can, after typing the stuff for Elaine's new "River" from 9 to 11, and then typing letters to Mom and Rita and Elaine just to have something to do until 12:15. Then Scrabble till 2:15, Ron winning again, this time only marginally, and then proofread all the pages solidly until 5:15, finding enough errors even in the things that Alice has done (though in general she found ALMOST everything, and she passed the proofreading test upstairs well enough to get the COBOL book to proofread!) to make myself happy about doing it, and get everything proofread except the left half of the unit six pages, only ten sheets in all, and the tables for the end of chapter 4. Thank goodness it's almost over. Finish up everything by 5:30, and leave for a productive weekend, I hope, though things are shaping up for busyness: the festival in Central Park at 5 tomorrow, John Moore's "Studio-warming" and the Thalia on Sunday for "Roma." And then for the first time I've fallen BEHIND in my 30-days 30-things schedule for my list of things to do. Toss all the stuff from work onto my desk to sort out tomorrow, and have dinner and don't even have time to wash the dishes since I want to shave before going to Bruce Solomon's party, invited to by Eriberto Perez at the baths on Tuesday, after Ratilekha and Govinda (see next page) perform rather mediocrely at NYU from 8 to 10:20. Then drive to 60 Gramercy Park North for a pleasant apartment, Adrian is FAT, sadly, the balcony is nice, the vodka tonics so mild as to be watered, GREAT Pennsylvania Lebanon Bologna and good cheese, and Bruce's OLDER friends absolutely NOT mixing with Eri's young, sexy, empty-headed Spanish friends. A cute guy in black seems to be part of both groups, but he doesn't look at me, and Eri bustles about putting on records, dancing, getting others to dance, shoving shut popper-cases into people's noses, and passing around too-infrequent joints. We leave about 11:30, having had enough in an hour and a half, getting home tired to bed.
DIARY 4121
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. Wake fairly late, and have good sex before getting out of bed and not at ALL feeling like working, so I decide that I have spare time, and spend from 9 to 12 sifting again through all the agent returns to sort out the four that I should write back to, and put everything into order for my files, and then have lunch. Then at 1:30 get to the diary typing, and FORCE myself to do 18 pages to get me up to date at 5:30. It's agony, and the writing is probably awful, but it's DONE. Then we eat at 6, another of John's "diet" evenings that included corn and hamburger and salad and noodles, and we're out at 7:15 to the Asian Moon Festival in Central Park. First look at the paper folding and Thai crafts outside the Wollman Rink, then inside to be rather depressed by all the RESTAURANTS (since it's sponsored by Benihana, they have the largest, smokiest, and smelliest pavilion) and watch the paper lanterns floating above the crowds and the 30-40% Oriental crowds. Then on the center stage are performances of koto music and Chinese dancing, the latter of which came first and we just missed it, and then I picked up a program and read about all the MAIN dances on the raft in the lake, so we go down that way, the lake looking BEAUTIFUL with floating Thai temples on candlelit rafts, dragon-boats with gaping jaws, and the forms for the fireworks we don't see at 10:10 pm. Japanese fan dances start it off, with excursions to villages for peasant stompings, then a Korean fan dance is lovely, followed by a drum dance of great excitement, something that reminds me of the old TV program "You Asked for It." Then Bhaskar does his "Cobra" number with the alternating nauli and sinuous backbends, bouncing his head around the floor in a circle around his knees, and it's 9:30 and we have to leave because we accepted Joe and Bob's invitation to a key-lime pie dessert, which is always yellow, never cooked, and good drippy, soggy piecrust of graham crackers. I have two, which I love, and John HATES Dot Castle, who's stewed to the eyeballs, babbles on about Harlem and Noel Coward and Bricktop and Greta Garbo, and acknowledges John's hatred of HER by saying he hates ALL woman, and John comes away at 11:30 wondering why Joe and Bob would INFLICT her on us, and all I can say is that they KNEW we'd TOLERATE her.
DIARY 4122
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23. Wake late again, and go through the Times to find what's on TV this week, and then work from 9:25 to 11, when I stop to watch the first to two programs on Ken Russell (see page after NEXT Sunday), and then from 11:30 to 12:05, when I stop for lunch, then do the dishes that I forgot I didn't do last night, and get back to work from 12:55 to 2:25, feeling just AWFUL. Yesterday I was sneezing and sniffling, a REAL cold seeming to be here, but TODAY I seemed not at all out of it, only tired and rather troubled in the bowels. So I stopped and read the Times until 4:30, feeling luxurious being able to do that, and then got back to work from 4:30 to 5:40, when I stopped to take a shower to wash my hair, and from 6:10 to 6:20 just before supper, to bring the total time worked today to 5 hours, not really much. But it IS Sunday, hey! Dinner of steak (meat from beef necks) and kidney (pissy smelling, but good tasting) pie (without the crust) and the gristle from the necks makes it NOT the best dish in the world when John says we'll be having it for four days. Then he decides he DOESN'T want to see "Roma" again, so I go off to the Thalia myself at 7:15 while he goes to some program at the "Eye" on 12th Street which seems to be run by Jean Erdman and Joseph Campbell, which he loves, and I see the end of "Roma," missing the good parts, and "The Hawks and the Sparrows" is just GREAT fun with the sung credits, mugging by Toto and someone who COULD be his son, sexy, too, and cute bouncing and chirping as the hawks and sparrows they convert. The START of "Roma" is the best, with the traffic jam, the eating scenes, the "frescos" discovered in the "subway" tunnels, and the pontifical fashion show, the Pope's "chair" one of the BRIGHTEST scenes ever done, and a disquieting look at the old Pius XII-type face on the man as the light GLOWED, showed that Fellini wasn't being ENTIRELY surface. Fat whores and a few campy queers as always, and an odd cameo by Gore Vidal, with gay friends and a pretty girl, and a few words from Anna Magnani. I even had a strange kneesy game (see next page) and had a piece of pizza and an ice cream come (hm, leave it) on the subway, getting home at 12:30, right to bed.
DIARY 4124
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24. Up and shower and shave, getting ready for work, including making lunch, and then work on Cost Accounting from 8:25 to 10, when I get over to watch the NEWER version of "Way of All Flesh," one of the magic four left unseen in the Academy Award list, only to find that they were playing SUNDAY'S schedule. I call WPIX and get rather tartly told by a Public Relations woman that they'd notified the New York Times of the change two weeks ago, "Way of All Flesh" wasn't being shown, and she said I should call the Times to complain, and I didn't have the wit to say that that was HER job, not mine. Had called Ron to say I'd be in at noon, and left then and got in at 11, Jerry Steinhart bitching because I made him a liar. Pick up a yellow slip of a registered something from Washington, and I assume it's the index, so I check around and find that I can be OUT for the next two weeks, and I can stay home and maybe FINISH it by Thursday night. Proofread the last pages of the Codemaster write-up to 1, type the Mattachine articles to 2, work on the book to 3 during lunch, and then go upstairs to get the first chapters on the Cost Accounting book from David Delete, number the HBJ pages, chat with Rodelinde and Sarah, and get down at 4 to work for another hour until 5, when my check comes and I can LEAVE, saying goodbye to everyone. So I'll have only 5½ hours in the paycheck when I get back. But I get a check from Dell, finally, and deposit that and the check from work and have enough left to put $100 into the kitty. To the Post Office at 5:30 and find its STAMPS, and home to gloat over all of them, and eat more kidney until 7, hurry with the dishes and get out at 7:10 to "Monsieur Verdoux" and "The King of Hearts," one just as good and spectacular as the other, with one ENORMOUS line in MV: "Maybe the yet-unborn are as terrified of life as we not yet dead are afraid of death," and of course I leap to the thought that it's the SAME terror of the SAME fact! "King" charming, witty, fabulously acted by everyone, and Senlis looks like a LOVELY town, though the girl behind said they were tearing down the cathedral to build a jetport. Out at 11:30, John too exhausted to talk, saying he didn't care for them, but I'm feeling FINE and tired, bed and sleep.
DIARY 4126
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25. Up fairly late and have breakfast, sort of getting ready for the breakfast-filled lunchless days at Hemlock Hall this week and next week. Then get to work on "Cost Accounting" from 9 to 12 and from 1-4, finishing chapters 5 through 7 at the average speed of 12 pages per hour, and I figure I can begin hiking my rate to get just a bit more than $7 per hour, for an average of just UNDER 7 pages per hour at the fudged rate. I think everyone will be very happy with that. I hope! Then type five pages to catch up with the diary, finding it thankfully easier than the ordeal of Saturday, and then have some time left, so I can write letters to Sidney and Ellie Kurtz and to the agents who liked my pages, getting half of them done and leaving half for tomorrow. Feel GREAT to get to many things done, actually being finished with the 24th item on my TO DO list, and it's the 25th! Don Berger calls to say he'll be at Tsi-Dun, and since the strike at City Center Opera Company has been settled with the orchestra going back to work for the performance on SATURDAY, I don't have to go to the opera tonight and can go to Tsi-Dun mySELF! Happy about that. But my bowels have been acting strangely, from a combination of the tuna fish and the steak and kidney pies, and I'm farting all through the morning until I take two charcoal tablets, which stops it, but I still defecate stuff which smells pretty foul two or three times through the day. Then do the dishes after dinner and take three MORE tablets and shave and shower and brush my teeth and dress in time to get down to the car at 7:20 and meet Frank coming down the street, and John's got the grass, but when we get into the apartment and light up, Garth Kreamer says that that's the ONE forbidden act in the apartment, and I'm hardly high with one drag, and John goes into the bathroom to finish it off, unknown to me, and that starts one of the most disgusting evenings in the history of Tsi-Dun as far as I'm concerted (see next pages). John's friend John Pascarella agrees with me, but John's done six and come once, and Frank goes off with his Nureyev-lookalike friend Danny when we leave at 11. I come with STRANGE fantasies (see following page), bed at 12:30.
DIARY 4131
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26. Up late again, have breakfast, get to work on marking the Politoske "Music Appreciation" book for indexing from 9:45 to 12:15, when I stop for lunch, and then work more, stop to read letters from Bill and Scientific American, and finish reading all 225 pages at 4, even having had the time to telephone Sarah and convince HER that I was working on her project. Then get back to letters and finish the letters to the agents who are interested in my stuff: three women, Sidney Porcelain, and Ellie Kurtz, and then go over and sort through US stamps for Peter Mike Schaeffer, have dinner, delay washing dishes until John finished all the preparation for tomorrow's dinner while doing five diary pages and getting to the letter for Peter and Don O'Shea, so that the ONLY letters I have left to answer are from Paul, for whom I'll wait until after the week in the Adirondacks to have something to talk about, and Bill, to whom I've decided to START sending tapes, though I've gone through a lot of mental processes thinking about what I'll say and how I'll RECORD it (see next page). Then all the dishes until 10:30, and I'm VERY uncomfortable doing them: my face is greasy and my eyes hurt, my forehead feels furled into a permanent frown, and I'm just mad-mad-MAD at John for dirtying SO many dishes and getting SO many mixing bowls and utensils covered with crud for a simple DINNER. Why can't he do ONE OR TWO special things, without making EVERY course a pre-made production? And then the soap gives out, which makes the water cruddy for the last bits of stainless, and I feel everything will be greasy for tomorrow, which doesn't make me feel any better. I keep thinking how HAPPY I am that there's a vacation coming up, since I surely seem to be needing one, if only to give me a non-work chance to shake whatever bug it is that I've got that makes me feel so AWFUL, unless it's the same tired, under-eating anemia and low-blood pressure that Azak found in John yesterday that told him that he should EAT more to build up his energy levels, and not to THINK about the shape the body gets into. Stoned news at 11-11:30, John to bed, I lay, then up to come, shooting AGAIN up onto my cheek, one of the most exciting bits of all.
DIARY 4133
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27. Up for sex with John, which I enjoy rather well much to my surprise after my feeling orgasm last night, and after breakfast only get to work to type two diary pages and then at 9:45 to 11:15 on the Economics index, calling David Delete for questions which essentially he says are MY job to resolve, but at least he knows that I've LOOKED at the material. Then the mail brings up the package from Washington, and I check to find that AGAIN the stupid people, probably Frank Giroux, have renumbered wrong for the SECOND time, so I phone Wendy Griffin again and she says that I should do whatever I have to do, and that she'll just have to accept it. Probably would have been better had that happened in the FIRST place. I tell her I'm going to be in Hemlock Hall and give her the telephone number in case she has anything she needs to tell me. She accepts it with good grace. Work on the renumbering job from 11:10 to 12:25, then have lunch and work on it from 1:20 to 3, when I have to leave for Harcourt to take in the chapters that I've done, and she can't find much that's wrong except for the n-dash specifications that I KNEW I missed and promised were OK in THIS batch. She had ONLY chapter 8 to give me, a nice SMALL thing to take to Hemlock Hall with me, and she hated me for going and wished me a good time. Didn't stay around too long and got back early enough to shower and clean up for the coming party with Mal Pate, Marcia Siegal, and Lotte and John Edwards. Mal rings PRECISELY at 6:30, arrival time, bringing a bottle of wine, and then Marcia comes quickly and the Edwardses arrive bringing a pepper plant that John loves. Marcia brings something too, but I can't remember what. We start with marvelous Lalit, or something, French aperitif, marvelous in taste, and the talk flows about all KINDS of things from travel to dance to books to future plans to children. Then to dinner, and the rabbit is quite marvelously tender and well-seasoned, and everyone loves it and the gentle salad, and the Dobosch torte sends everyone into raptures, particularly since the third bottle of wine of the evening has just gone. Then we have Grand Marnier, and mercifully, though it was a GREAT evening, everyone leaves about 11:30, and I beg John to let me do the dishes tomorrow, and we're into bed VERY tired, suitcases out for the packing for tomorrow.
DIARY 4134
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28. Wake at 8 and John wants to leave at 9:30, after vacillating about whether he wants to wait for the mailman for his unemployment check. Also, Mom phoned sometime to say that she wanted to go to Russia with me, and when I said she could, she said that I should phone the Westchester Sports Club and see if there's room on the plane, so I did the dishes until 9, telling John that I would NOT be ready at 9:30, and then tried a couple of times, packing all the while, taking the index for renumbering and ordering, all Scientific Americans (13 issues it only NOW dawns on me), the Proust, and the chapter of "Cost Accounting." Get to Westchester about 9:40, after Mom called once already, and they DO have room; Mom calls back, tell her all about it, and she SAYS she'll send me a check, and luckily I'm sending OFF checks today which will make my balance just OVER $400, so I can WRITE a check to Westchester FOR her, saying she's living with me, and expect HER check back in time to pay for ALL of Hemlock Hall, so John doesn't have to wait for HIS check, and we can finally leave at 10:30. Drive to Rudi's, getting VERY hungry, at 1:35, enjoying the orchestration of autumn as we drive out of totally green Bronx into Westchester with ONE red tree, and then they appear mixed with yellows and even spots of brown, until by Rudi's the place is almost half colored. The food is expensive but tasty and I try driving some, but nod and doze off almost to sleep, so John has to take over. Get to Ithaca, NOT knowing where to go at 6:35, and get there by asking for the name of the road, which at least he DOES know, and we're there about 7 for wine and the braided cheese and chat with John, looking more beautiful than ever, and Fran and Joy, who tell me Mrs. Johnson can raise the rent as much as she wants to, that they'll take care of John's mistake-on-mistake problem, and they tell about the miles of computer tapes and full-time computer systems and backup files in a couple of places, and how my IBM stock sales can NOT be checked, which is just MARVELOUS. Dinner of spaghetti and meat balls and sausage and chocolate mousse with whipped cream. HEAVY (as the cream-cheese cake at Rudi's). Walk to lakeside and stargaze until it gets cloudy, and along road, smelling everything, escorted by Wally's bitch Ginger, back at 11, talk till I get tired and bed at 11:45, John at 12.
DIARY 4135
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29. John's up and out for a walk at 7:30, I get up at 8, some notes written on John Bowell-in-law's orange paper, breakfast of French toast so as not to compete with anything from Hemlock Hall, beautiful of Joy, who's on a crash hormone diet and can't eat ANYTHING but coffee! But, hopefully truthfully, says she isn't a BIT hungry. LOVE her. Fran as close and cuddly as ever, and John's going into the Air Force in October for 4 years, getting his hair, his worst feature, shaved off. Joy's off with John for her daily diet fix, and we're off to drive LOVELY roads to Hemlock Hall, and I start transcribing from notes herewith: 9/29 8 am (1) (these are page-side numbers) add to "Infinite to do" list: 1) find constant-universe-eternity-delineator (Syllables: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) the constant ratio---SPEED of atom/person/universe. Time to go ONE diameter [i.e., to change from "what it is" to "what it will be" from "what it was."] Time to go from "Start of being" to "end of being." Analogy of MICROBE looking at pendulum-comet, study of which would teach MICROBE about GRAVITY and MEN. (2) Add to "Age coming" list. Front TEETH lose perfect smoothness and become DECAY etched for the first time, prelude to disfiguring decay. What OTHER "universal" ratios? Pi from d/r, e from WHAT? H from WHAT. What OTHER. HOW universal is UNIVERSAL. IS a circle UNIVERSAL??? (3) Thoughts UNENDING: add to INFINITE TO DO LIST: A) Art works, and start NEW list with the golden mean ratio as the SIZE determinant, by 128 times CRAYON width, and rules, say, YELLOW crayon 64 times, leaving half blank, then red 16 times, leaving half blank, then violet 8 times, leaving half blank, then blue 4 times, leaving half blank, then green 2 times, leaving 2 blank, and one black and one white, or arrange so it's SYMMETRICAL and the CENTER is only the ONLY one. B) Stories. I should go through diary to EXTRACT all the art works I've described, STORIES I've described, THINGS to DO I've described, and set DAYS aside to work on EACH. I'd LOVE to rework my system with a numerological day to study (1), above! And THAT is a practical THING TO DO (4) expanding on (1), what IS [FOLLOWED BY FORMULAS!]
DIARY 4139
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30. Up at 8 and I shower fast and shave in the living room and up to breakfast at round table with couple from Merrick L.I. and their three kids, and the Griswolds recommended Mt. Snowy yesterday, so we drive out along Indian Lake at 10:30 and see the peak with the fire tower on top in front of us, and walk along the level trail in the VERY colorful woods, though the trail is still mainly dark as the trees retain most of their leaves, and Lucy tromps on ahead most of the time. We pass numbers of stoned teenagers coming out who've camped on top all night, and others pass us pushing in while we stop for mushrooms along the way. The last part of the climb is steep, meeting older women camped out along the way waiting for their party to come back down, and the last part is fast, getting to the top to find a crew from Cornell breaking down the back door to the cabin, others building a fire to cook bean-like stews, and everyone shouting back and forth to each other. Around to the side to our OWN private ledge at 12:50 for sun and a view and photographs and bananas and apples and triscuits and peanut butter, and others come to look, but we obviously belong, so they leave us alone. Wander over to the fire tower and climb through the broken glass to the top for the view in all directions in the fairly clear day, and it's not until we come DOWN that we see all the signs saying that the tower is closed. Funny. It didn't look it. Look over other balconies of ledges and start down at 2:10, long and tired to mushroom-hunting and GREAT light-colors to car at 5:10, and VERY tired and shop for Sara Lee pound cake and Archway Brownie bars and two pints of butter pecan ice cream and frozen green beans and back for squash and mushrooms and puffballs for dinner, puffballs not TERRIBLE tasty, one even bitter that I spit out, and we sit without lights watching the moon and talking and smoking, John out to telescope for "Hercules" and we all sleep where we sit, and I get bed down and get in to sleep soundly at 11. Play with John, but he doesn't seem very interested, and the blankets are so HEAVY, even though he allows the window to remain closed, and turn over to sleep.