1973 5 of 6
DIARY 4141
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1. Wake at 7:30 and John's hard and I do him until 8, then up to do ALL dishes, up late for breakfast and round table with Griswolds and Curly and other couple (the Whites?) and after long talk, Ben takes John to garage to weld fender, Lucy practices her gamba and THEY are taking a canoe to three lakes and I get off to canoe to lay and drift, then around to island and COME with pleasure, looking at water and trees and sunlight and puffballs and squirrel, then write THIS all at 12:30, tired of sitting, and leave seat at 1. Hunt for boat, find it, jerk off AGAIN and watch semen soak into moss tuft. AGAIN discovered diffraction-grating (or is it tree-leaf interstices?) color webs sliding across surface of boots, fingernails, hands, leaves, pine branches, plastic pen, but NOT paper or cloth, though INK, even dried, does it! GLASSES don't do it, but OILY glass frames do it better than non-oily frame parts. Tiny (and not so tiny) flies drinking of semen---FANTASY of creatures born of SUCH a union, uniquely triggered by a SPOT of radiation reflected from my WATCH at the moment of ingestion. What ODD moments could be THE moment of world-catastrophe, but it would be the SAME kind of "odd, unique" moment for EACH person at the INSTANT of death. Does the MOMENT (the CIRCUMSTANCE) cause the death, does the death cause the circumstance, or are they independent? Or, BOTH/AND again, are they MUTUAL causes of each OTHER? Row around and get disgusted with SOUNDS: dog barking, power saw in Blue Mountain Lake village AND at Minnowbrook, and a SEAPLANE at Minnowbrook, trucks on highway, blasting beyond Blue Mountain Lake, SAD and DEPRESSED now---low blood pressure and low blood sugar at 3 pm? Then I get into a strangely philosophical mood in which I answer all the "age-old" questions---like "Doctor Hero" did, though he answered many of them WRONG, and I ask the others later in the evening for their suggestions, but they don't give any, just sit back and stare, like me, at the Milky Way stretched slantwise down the sky to the piney horizons. It was a pleasant time on the island, with NOTHING THAT I HAD TO DO, something I was looking forward to for a long time.
DIARY 4144
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2. Wake with the sounds of their leaving, particularly since the stilt-construction of Lakeside and Brookside enables each side to feel ALL the movements of the other side, all the indications (lower water pressure, sounds, even at one point a leak from the tank below into the boathouse) of when they bathe or toilette, and one night they can't get down the Murphy bed and John insists he hears the crunches for just hours on end, and at one point there are rather sexual thumpings coming regularly from the other side, too, though usually they seem, strangely, to have a party of TWO women and ONE man. I really truly miss a fireplace, and we DO get Balsam for next year, after finding out that someone's taken the Griswold's room for NEXT year so they won't BE there for the first time in 18 years! It's raining out today, and for a few moments the view of the lake is pleasant under the rain, but after breakfast I get to work on the index at 9:45 and work straight on through until 4:45, getting most of it done, and it's nice to know that there IS time to do these things. Get tired after 7 hours of this, and then start reading back issues of Scientific American when I notice John fussing about the mushrooms, and remember that he's invited the Griswolds over this evening at 5, so I make myself presentable---change into my other trousers!---and they're in to eat our sliced apples and triscuits and the mushrooms, that John warns them not to eat TOO many of (he cooks only 3 apiece, and I have about 5!, and he has 2, so they share ALMOST their portion of 5) or they'll end up with the flaming farts (MY terminology). I think there's little to talk about, but John loves basking in their attention, and reluctantly we go up to the house when we hear the bell, saddened at Mack's pronounced limp, emphasized by his tiny ankles and ENORMOUS feet, while Betsy's legs still look like a cheerleaders, though she's puffing because she seemed to lead the DASH up the hill. Announcement of slides from the South Seas, and we smoke and get up after 8 to see plane trips to New Zealand glaciers, trips to Rotorua and Fiji and Moorea and Tahiti (all hot and humid, sadly remarks his commentary), and they are nice enough that John wants to GO! Bed early.
DIARY 4145
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3. Don't feel like working at ALL today, so I sit down with all the Scientific Americans while John goes through "Lord of the Rings," then has a nap (no, that was yesterday, while I slept), and I get finished with them ALL, so that leaves only the index to finish and the copyediting to do and I will have done ALL that I wanted! About 3:30 John is going stir crazy, so we're out in the car to pass 100,000 on the odometer for poor Queenie in the blazing glory of Lakeland after stopping at Buttermilk Falls to find there are no mushrooms to be seen. Continue up to whatever town is at the end of Long Lake (the middle of it, actually) and get some booze, wine, and then there's really nothing else to do so we go back to the room. I'm getting tired of the sounds from the other side, tired of the same food, glad that John has to get back to sign for unemployment on Friday, and had just about enough of this for ANOTHER year. Tonight at dinner we talk about climbing Blue Mountain, but everyone agrees there's not much to see from up there, so they get together and recommend that we climb Vanderwacker, which we'd not even HEARD of before, and then even give me their prized Army compass (Curly) and notated area map (Mack) for the climb, and we DO feel sort of their protégés, and I even talk to Mrs. Webb about the contretemps about not having the Griswolds back, and she, not very business-like, states that she can't save any rooms for anyone, what if they didn't show up, THEN where would they be, this is a business just like any other, and there's nothing she can DO about it. Now John knows that he can write for reservations in JUNE for the following OCTOBER. Back, and I don't feel like doing ANYTHING, sitting in a blue funk, almost sick-feeling, but then get around to work on the index, and it takes me over from 8:20 to 10:20, when I FINISH it for typing, deciding ONLY to type it, and pack it all away. Then it's time for bed, and we cuddle goodnight, then he wants to read more, so I smoke alone in my twin bed and turn off the lights, just hearing him come in, but not before I jerk off VERY delightfully under the covers, and even dry off thoroughly before he crawls into the next bed. Sad.
DIARY 4146
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4. Out after breakfast to climb Vanderwacker, and it's a long drive, but the map puts us EXACTLY there, and we get into the woods at 10:30, and it goes levelly on for a great distance with BEAUTIFUL areas of gold light from the leaves scattered about the forest floor, large trees COVERED with oysters too tiny to pick, and NO one around. Not rainy, but dim and hazy through the day, heightening the effect of the boggy sections off to the right as we pass drowned valleys with dead trees standing in still waters. Then to two cabins lightly screened and undamaged, and the climb begins over leaf-strewn paths that I fear are going to be difficult coming down. Seem to get to the top quickly, but the top goes on and on and on, through pine forests where the path, cut into the ground like with a plow, passes fern grottos and the multicolored leaves so attract me that I begin collecting some of the beautiful ones, which have ended up, on 10/15, on the sideboard in the dining room, quite the worse for drying and age in the interim. See a part of the "view" and we know it's hazy, along a col seeming to link one intermediate peak to the summit, and on further and further until there seemed no POSSIBLE place the summit could hide, and finally at 12:15 there was the fire tower, unbroken, which we climbed to look down on Oak Pond Camp and the misty hills around about, John rested on a rock while I pushed to wooded edges which didn't improve the view, and then we went down about 1 to get down at 3 and back at 4, time enough to bathe and clean up and John to cook the mushrooms to get up to the Griswolds at 4, only to be sent downstairs to wait until they got ready, and then the Hoyts and the Whites and the Griswolds and the A.-Zolnerzaks sat around and ate mushrooms and drank Mack's whiskey and got properly drunk for an UPROARIOUS dinner with John talking about the "taste it all over again" of Indian food, the SENSATION, and everyone ROARED with laughter, so much so that people from other tables wondered WHAT we were talking about! Nice way to end it all, and John was absolutely FLUSHED with triumph. Back to smoke alone in bed again, hoping for him to come in with me, but he doesn't, so I'm asleep without him, glad to be back to a queen-size bed tomorrow.
DIARY 4147
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5. Alarm goes off at 7 and we're up to pack and get into the car at 7:30, John being ready enough before me to get the car ready before I'm even ready to leave. Lug everything up and in for the long drive into civilization, eating in Warrensburg at 9:30, I having a bacon omelet and coffee and he picks up some apples and squash and things at the fruit stand, and then we look for a place to stop for a picnic, but there doesn't seem to BE any place. I drive from Warrensburg ALL the way down into the city limits at about 2, then he drives into Brooklyn and I sit and wait for him while he signs, looking at all the sexy guys coming out of some nearby college, and he buys the Voice when he goes for groceries, and I unpack and try for the Times, but there isn't any, and I'm disgusted because Mom HASN'T sent a check as she said she would, so I telephone and she says she didn't understand. Drat! Get some other checks in the mail and John writes me a check for $70 (which I pay him back TODAY) to cover the Hemlock Hall check, and she says she'll send me the check right away. Great. I can't find the Times and settle for the Post, but there's nothing on TV, and John says he wants to go see "Phantom India," so we have dinner and get off to that, seeing Parts III, IV, I, and II, and interestingly the SAME character from Kerala that closes IV begins I, so it SEEMS like a cycle. I take notes in case he comes up with any interesting places, and Part I is "The Impossible Camera" in Delhi and villages, festival in HAMPI, and Konarak, where traveling French hippies say the only wise thing: "If they catch ONE kilo of fish, and don't need two, NOTHING will persuade them to work harder." God, doesn't the world need MORE of that kind of person? Part II is "Things Seen in Madras," mostly Bharat Natyam, and the March 6 car festival from Kapansch Vahar on the outskirts of Madras, hypnotizing for him and us. Part I also had Teo Telicumon, the eagle-visitant that I think we passed before Kancheepuram---they started filming on January 18, filming for five months. Part III is "Indians and the Sacred," in Tanjore, Madurai, Mysore, and Rameswaram. Part IV is "Dream (Kerala) and Reality (Communism)" in Cochin, Quilon, Periyar, Kerala and Trivandrum, but we're really NOT dying to see Parts V-VII now.
DIARY 4148
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6. Do lots of odds and ends in the morning like writing about the deposit interest since on Friday Mrs. Johnson said that we WEREN'T getting interest on our deposit, and other odds and ends, and then at 11:40 get down to typing the index until 1:05, when we have lunch, then from 1:35 to 6:10 I work on it, and from 6:50 until 8:50, when I begin making lots of mistakes, but anyway there are two movies I want to watch on TV, since I got the paper specially for it. "Mysterious Lady" with Garbo is just about as non-memorable as MANY of hers: she's a spy getting documents from Conrad Nagel on a train, disgracing him, but she kills von Seyfertitz, an AWFUL actor, to get some OTHER documents to RESCUE him, and it seems like such a SHAME that they should get each other and live happily ever after after all the AWFUL things that they've done---maybe THIS is why few of the critics like the movie. At 10:30 I sit and they're doing "Essene" by Wiseman, and I get sucked into it by the starkness of the photography and the basic goodness of the abbot of the place, but the fantasies I had about GOING to one of these places was rapidly dispelled: they attract only the most EGOCENTRIC, OBNOXIOUS, UNLOVELY people imaginable to indulge in listless work and endless religiosity which seems at once terribly pompous and achingly ineffective as they pray over someone to heal them, when maybe all he needs is a good psychiatrist. Some BEAUTIES who didn't say a word, but they're probably GENUINE and won't be there long. Unmistakable air of gayness, totally suppressed, about everything, too. John's back from something about 11:30, and he goes to bed and I watch "Doddsworth" with the characteristically excellent Walter Houston as the down-to-earth industrialist who finally divorces his awful wife, played plainly and convincingly by Ruth Chatteron, to join Mary Astor, who expressed one of the most WHOLE-HEARTED waves of utter joy that I've seen on the screen in AGES at the end, almost worth the fatigue I felt when I shut if off at 2, to feel even too tired to come, so I simply crawl in beside John, happy to be in the same bed with him after so many nights of sleeping totally alone.
DIARY 4149
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7. We may have had sex this morning, we did one time soon after the trip, and since I didn't get to work until 9:15, it might have been today, though I had cereal for breakfast to wean myself away from Hemlock Hall. Worked 9:15 to 11, stopping to see Twyla Tharp in "Bix Pieces" and then from 11:30 to 12:25, stopping for lunch and a HUGE argument with John about how HE always tries to look at the OBJECTIVE dance piece and bring his KNOWLEDGE to bear on the problems that he SAW, while I constantly think about what I THOUGHT of the piece, which, he says, turns me off from LEARNING anything about it. I get him back to SOME kind of normalcy when I get back to work at 1:20 to 4:20, actually FINISHING the thing, ready for mailing tomorrow. Then work from 4:45 to 6:15 on the HBJ Cost Accounting book, more and more of a drag, and I have a LOT to do at work with it tomorrow before I can take it in. John is willing to re-see "Playtime" and I'm willing to re-see "Ten from Your Show of Shows," so we go to the Brooklyn Heights Cinema at 7:15 after smoking, wait to get in, but I see the END of "Playtime" and don't know what's so funny, except where John telegraphs it, and then we laugh through "Ten," though I'm a bit bored with it a second time, and "Playtime" has enough material for a DOZEN movies, with doormen ushering in midgets with a sweep of a hand over the head, a boy ducks down into his raincoat to escape his father's swat, traffic circles go round and round to calliope music, the Arc de Triomph, Eiffel Tower (EIFFEL TOWEL??), Place de la Concord, and Montmartre seen ONLY in window reflections and in the scarf he gives the American girl who plays the piano at the FIASCO of a restaurant, with multi-seasoned fish, upcoming tiles---just a whole HOST of things, and I saw MUCH MORE in the re-seeing of the last segment than I EVER saw the first time around, but by this time I have a vague headache and am feeling VERY tired, so we're home about 11:30, exhausted, and both into bed after showering, I preparing to get BACK to work after not really having the feeling that I was ever on VACATION. Something is wrong, I mumble to myself, and something HAS to change. Next weekend: WRITING HASSLE AGAIN.
DIARY 4151
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8. Put the index and the pages into large envelopes and take them to the post office only to discover that there are no windows open on Columbus Day! Chagrined until I find that the stamp machines that weigh and dispense stamps actually WORK (to the amazement of the old fellow, rather like me, who exclaimed, "Well!" whenever a machine did what it was SUPPOSED to do), so I managed to get everything off and get into work at 9:30. Ron isn't ready for me yet, so I go upstairs to pick up the next chapters of their books from Sarah and David, and leave a note for Rodelinde saying that I AM back, so she needn't have worried. Get a call from Charlotte Rosenburg about a proofreading job that I turn down. Get a call from Dick Smith, and it takes him until MONDAY of NEXT week to get the typing he'd talked about to me. Then Ron says there are no activities specs from Tom yet, so I look through what Sally gave me, having somehow lost the log, and decide to put the original numbers back anyway to see just what it IS that we're missing, and have a lot of fun working with the 1-58 program: take any number, square each digit and add the sums to get a new number, and repeat the process until you get 1 or 58. Tried for a long time before I even got a ONE, and tried ALL numbers below 101---which won't work, since the sum is 2, which goes to 58---without finding a SINGLE one that DIDN'T. Have to find what the LOWEST one that DOESN'T is from Jane Cohen before it can be sent out. Then work on the book from 1:45 to 4:15, finishing it in rather a sweat, and get to HBJ to get two MORE chapters. Home early after stopping at Town Hall to pick up two $2 student tickets for Balasaraswati at Town Hall, and out to eat at Chuan Yuan, fabulous TASTING carp but MANY bones that made the taste not NEARLY sensational because of the care needed in CHEWING. Then watch the American Ballet Theater on TV from 8-9:30, good, ending with "Etudes," showing ALL of Tudor's listless ballet with Sallie Wilson. I'm back to do something in the study, back to see John watching "Pacem in Terris" when I get over at 11, and I smoke and shower, but he doesn't seem to want to do anything, so we're into bed at 11:30 to fall asleep barely touching, only the perfunctory goodnight peck.
DIARY 4152
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9. With breakfast and getting up late I don't get to work until 9:45, sort out the activities until 1:30, Scrabble to 3, and finish the "Introduction to the Index" page and write a letter to Wendy Griffin finishing up the project, and write to Sally Goldberg, and then Dick Smith calls to say he and Alan Henderson will be resigning at Mattachine this evening, and I phone John and find that it's OK if I'm not home to dinner, just warm up the pot roast, so I'm out of work at 5:30 and get down to Mattachine to try to locate the dates of the former Presidents, but it seems almost IMPOSSIBLE to do so from either Mattachine Review, which talks ONLY about the national organization, OR the Newsletter, which is written as if there WERE no officers until VERY late in the game. Most puzzling. Get some FEW notes before the meeting starts at 6:15. Don Goodwin asks if I'm free to speak, and I say I'm not, wondering if he'll even be PRESIDENT after Dick asks him to resign! The crew around the table is VERY faggy and unpleasant, except for Breck Ardery who seems angry with something, Jim Owles who comes in late but acts as a moderating agent, and Randy in the corner, who's cute, but, at Dick's insistence, doesn't know his ass from his elbow and gets fucked in both. I take notes: "The minutes are read by a FAG (Paul Stack) like a FAG, the Treasurer's report gave NO authentic balance (it seemed that the outstanding bills belied the position that "It looks pretty good) (Alan Magionella, acting treasurer and a "friend" of Don's who stomped out in anger at the "hatchet job" being done on his friend by Alan and Dick when they started bringing up his bad points). Dick made a statement of facts and asked for comments. Russell Barnes, Bob Burdick, me, and the fellow from Everything for Everybody ALL spoke before FINALLY a director, Paul Stack, decided to say something. It turned out that the corresponding secretary Jay Friend is LIVING there and making it into a pigpen, according to Russell, and Lon Lowery, the only bug-eyed fellow who's around a lot doing nothing, showed up late, Steve Kraatz resigned by phone, and Dominick Marino seemed to be turned off enough
DIARY 4154
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10. Again to work at 9:45 after breakfast, and sign down for 10:20 to 5:20 on HBJ COPYEDITING -- at $7 an hour from ACC---with two hours out for the shock announcement that Agnew HAS resigned, and Anne Herrick and Cyndy and Ron and I get into a LONG talk about how eventually everyone will be EQUAL, even the teacher with the pupil, though I can't get through to the females how silly it sounds to say that the teacher is EQUAL TO THE PUPIL IN WHAT HE'S TRYING TO TEACH. Only after she leaves, saying she has to get back to work, do I think of the ultimate line of the trend: sex equality, men conceive and bear children, bodiless men and women, and finally Omega Man, where ALL knowledge is shared by COMMON minds---but this is hardly something to PLAN for or to PREDICT for any PRACTICAL purposes. Home at 5:30 to have dinner and John tells me about the funny TV show that Jews and Arabs were giving blood next to each other for their respective sides, and neither was particularly disturbed that the other way lying next to him, and I came up with the fabulous idea for a story as described on Diary 4155. I type three pages and probably do some fussing around the apartment, but I don't have anything to show for it. John goes to bed early: he's gone to Azak's for more tests, and his lymphocyte count is abnormally high, as if he's in the constant state of fighting a disease (oh, yes, some afternoons this week I go to the Promenade and sit and look at the sunset, Monday we went before dinner, Thursday I went stoned before I went to the Baths, today I ran back to get John, but he didn't want to see, content to read his Voice on the sofa), and so he's feeling very logy and seems now to have a legitimate excuse for not wanting to have sex very much, which is a pity. So he's to bed quite early and I shower and wash my hair, so I have to stay up until it dries, and write down the plot of the story first, then smoke and write what's on the FOLLOWING pages, and then eat, then come AGAIN, hoping I don't start a new trend, and get to bed quite late and quite tired out, but feeling that I've at LEAST been in touch with what I wanted to do with MYSELF for a change.
DIARY 4159
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11. In to work at 9:30 and Ron actually has something for me to do: four progress check layouts that take me until 11:45 to do, just getting them out of the way, and then work on the book from 11:45 to 2, play Scrabble till 3:30, Ron winning, and back to the book from 3:25 to 4:25 and leave at 4:30 to get back to HBJ, having finished only ONE of the chapters of the two she gave me on Monday, but she has two MORE to give me, so I'm back and out early and get home early, John already gone to class to DTW, and I smoke and get out to watch the sunset, not very nice, still the AWFUL gray-haired guy cruising, and get back to heat up the dinner very quickly and dash through it in order to zip through the dishes while the radio plays music, determined to get through before the 7 pm news, and I DO, and then into the shower to have a STONED time shaving and showering and putting in contacts and smoking, getting out about 7:40, since I want to watch TV. Have such GREAT luck, even in coming, that I feel guilty about staying longer (and anyway it's gotten quiet by 11:10, so I check out and get home to watch "Illustrated Man," which is put back to 12 for some special deal in a news program, and I get out the copy of the book, but am sad to see that they include ONLY "The Veldt," "The Last Night on Earth," which they changed around ENTIRELY by having the plot revolve around the idea that the parents should kill their children to keep them from the pain, and he DOES, and then it doesn't happen, and "The Long Rain," which is rather good in the special effects department, particularly the AURAL relief of HEARING the rains stop, but there's ENTIRELY too much about the linking stories, and though Robert Drivas is pretty to look at, Rod Steiger is hardly a fetching "Illustrated Man" and too much time is spent mooning around the staring eyes of Claire Bloom. But it IS interesting, and I AM glad that I saw it, but Bradbury seems to be the Echt-impossible-to-film man, his "Fahrenheit 451" eluding filming---now here AGAIN would be the area for CARTOONING---imagine his "Martian Chronicles" or "Golden Apples of the Sun" in CARTOONS!!!!
DIARY 4161
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12. Get into work at 9 for the first time this week, and Ron finally says that Tom is supposed to take the format of the Classroom Activities home with him over the weekend for evaluation, so I work through until 4:15, making it a 34-hour week, and I actually WORKED on their stuff less than a QUARTER of that time, or about 8 hours, so when my check for over $160 comes on Monday, I've CLEARED $20 an hour, something which can HARDLY be surpassed! But I don't feel very well at ALL, and Anne Herrick is saying that she feels as if she's sick, and I accuse her of spreading WHATEVER it is to the whole office, and sure enough both she and Freya (aha!) are out Monday through Wednesday of next week (there have got to be SOME ADVANTAGES to being so far behind in the diary) with some serious intestinal virus which I feel pieces of all weekend. Dell calls with a cookbook index for next Monday, so I leave at 4:15 to pick that up, sorry that I couldn't have done it YESTERDAY, when I had to go to HBJ. Then home too late for the sunset, and we eat quickly and get out to see Balasaraswati, John using one of his "secret" parking places (which I recommend he print up and sell in a limited edition of, say, 10,000) for the Times Square area, in a tiny frontage of Bryant Park between a hydrant and a no parking area, just MADE for a VW. Out early, as usual, so I borrow $2 from John to buy a paperback, and sure enough, having been caught up in Pynchon and Proust for so long, there are good things out, and I get a copy of "The Breast," which is quite short, and I get through about 1/3 of it waiting for the curtain on Balasaraswati to go up at 8:10. There's just a small rude audience waiting for it, and the girls behind John chatter away until he tells them to shut up, and then they talk back, just like a well-trained New York audience, and then after the intermission they all run downstairs to get the vacant seats down there. The first half is rather a looser: her "Alarippu" (but see next page for this). Very tired toward the end, and get home just at 11, too late to watch "The Unholy Three," which I can postpone till tomorrow night, and sleep even without grass.
DIARY 4163
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13. Give myself a BIT of a rest by finishing "The Breast" in the morning, then over for breakfast and start working on a letter to Singer. But then I have to see what I NEARLY have finished, and it's time for lunch and I get into a LONG talk with John about WHAT I should write her, and we conclude that I should say I don't have anything ready YET, but when I do I'll send it to her. We ALSO, reluctantly on my part, decide that I must be the one (unless I want to PAY someone to LOOK over all my stuff and ADVISE me---and then I KNOW that if the advice given was something that I DIDN'T agree with, it'd be AGONY to do it, and I'd probably end up ignoring it) to choose that I want to do next, and I sort of decide that the first FINISHED thing would be a QUICK REVISION OF "ACID HOUSE" back into the first person with a MINIMUM of revision, just to get the whole thing DONE and out of my mind, and then I can begin working on the OTHER things. But before I do THAT, I have to reorganize my diaries---and THIS seems to get to the crux of the problem: I'd wanted to SEPARATE out what I wanted to work on next, but the idea of having everything in ONE CONTINUOUS diary has become MORE and MORE of a hindrance, so I decided that I'd have to BREAK EVERYTHING DOWN INTO ITS PARTS again, and have one book ONLY for diary, one book of things to work on, one book strictly homosexual, one part only of Philosophy, one only of experiences---and I start to do it with the first volume of the diary, severely hampered because there are no DATES except those that I kept sporadically on separate sheets of typing, or internal to the diary itself. So I go through separating out things on the dining room table, feeling physically rather poorly all the time, and then actually get back to the exercises, and by the time dinner comes around I've gotten into it enough to know it'll take me about TWO WEEKS to finish sorting everything out, but all I have is time, which I don't have ANY of. So there. Dinner and continue working, and in to watch "The Unholy Three," and John's out at something or other, and "Unholy Three" is quite forgettable too, except for Victor McLaglen's Hercules muscles (too over-powdered white) in one of the first scenes, and VERY tired to bed at 12:30, way after John.
DIARY 4164
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14. Back to reworking the diary through the morning and afternoon after I finish the Times that John brought in when he got back from his walk, and get through the first volume at about the time he gets back from his bicycling in the high winds, where he was worried about getting blown over, and I asked "Did you get blown?" and he answers, "Yes, on the wharf," and "I was so excited I just WHISH!" I was not a little envious. Then MUST get down to the work for everyone else, and work from 4:45-6 and 6:45-11:30 on the HBJ book, and at least had SOMETHING to show for the weekend as far as freelance work went. But I have to resign myself to the fact that I probably WON'T have another free week at ACC, and I hate the feeling of RESENTMENT that I have for having to get BACK to work: it would have been FAR better for my feeling toward the company had they never ALLOWED me to stay on the job with nothing to do. It LITERALLY spoiled me rotten. SMALL bits of time are fine, but when I have such a HUGE BLOCK and get USED to the idea of bringing in all my freelance stuff and GETTING IT DONE, I really HATE to see it stop and hate the company for MAKING it stop; whereas if it'd never started, I wouldn't have this opportunity to get angry. I KNOW how stupid it sounds, but I merely have to OBSERVE the feelings it causes in me, and I know that I'm reporting them as fairly as I can. Sort of wanted to see the "Planet of the Apes" duet at the Elgin,& I wanted to see "John and Mary" on TV, but I ACTUALLY told myself that they probably weren't any good, that I wouldn't be able to REMEMBER whether I saw them or not, so I could actually use the time better by doing something else, and no one was more surprised than I to find that I actually WORKED. Actually only 4 times in the last 4 lines? Reading too much Proust---nothing to write about, and I'm getting too involunted, or should I say, borrowing a phrase from Scott-Moncrief, INVERTED? John's in bed already, and I debate jerking off, but I crawl into bed without smoking, figuring to get up and jerk off, but I lay for a bit, earplugs in against the woman upstairs, and find myself falling asleep WITHOUT pot.
DIARY 4165
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15. Up at 8 and CAN'T get myself to exercise, so I just go off to work without breakfast, but I see the sign again for the 44¢ eggs and toast, and I can't resist, and the whole bill comes to 47¢, with 10¢ tip, for 57¢, only 6¢ more than coffee and a roll at the counter downstairs. In at 9:30 and start on the book from HBJ, going through fairly nicely until 1:30, stopping to chat with Alice and Dror, AND we have a game of Scrabble, and Ron ruefully says that Tom hasn't gotten around to okaying the specs YET. Any minute now, I fear. Back to the book from 2:40 to 4:40, and Jennifer Daily comes past, talking about my job, saying that I'm doing too much rewriting, and she DOES seem to know what she's talking about, and Jerry says that ACC's personnel records have been sent to RANDOM HOUSE, and Jennifer says she'd much rather talk to the Managing Editor THERE than to Janet Mais, upstairs, who I think is just fine. Dick Smith comes in FINALLY with the Mattachine typing, saying that it's just a half hour of two pages, and I get to him at 5:15 when Jennifer leaves. And it's about 4 pages that take about an hour, and I phone John, who wants to go off to some Iranian music thing at the Open Eye, and I phone at 5 saying I'll be home at 6:30, then at 6:30 saying I'll be home at 6:55, and when I get home at 6:55, having given the last of the stuff to Dick, John says he's changed his mind, and I'm overwhelmed with guilt until John says that he really didn't FEEL like going. We chat and I do the dishes, and then I DEMAND to get back to typing---after watching Spiro Agnew's speech on TV from 7:30-8, and then the "Nefertiti" program from 8 to 9, seeming to think she was ALMOST as powerful as Akhenaton. Then over to start typing, and it's a rough job since there's just such a backlog, and I can only do 10 pages before I'm just WORN OUT, and get over at 10:30 to see what he's watching, but he's ready for bed, and I'm STILL too tired to come, so I smoke to make myself feel better and crawl in beside him, hoping to be able to resist going to the baths TOMORROW so that I can work on the writing rearranging, and keep them for THURSDAY---at least until after I've TYPED the last one!
DIARY 4166
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16. Wake about 7, nothing going sexually, so I'm out of bed at 7:30, getting everything together and out about 8:15, getting to work at 8:45, before ANYONE else, riding up in the elevator with Tom Aloisi. On the billing sheet I have that I worked on the BOOK from 8:45 to 1:05, then played a Scrabble game in which Ron scored 431 and me 363!---almost an 800 game with only TWO bingos by him. Feeling MARVELOUS now about how much work I can do in the office, and I don't even have to FINISH HBJ tonight (which is going much faster anyway, having, I hope, gotten over the hard parts), and I have to plan on taking in the INDEX tomorrow just to have something to WORK on during the day. Even if I GET work, I can finish the Cost Accounting chapters during my LUNCH two hours. JUST WONDERFUL! Then leave at 5:30 and walk to the subway with Sarah Parker, chatting nicely, and Ginny Croft this morning said that SHE heard the place was being bought by ITT! Well, we'll just have to wait and SEE! I get home at 6 and John's going out at 7, and I'm determined to get back to the diary, so I do the dishes and sit down to do 10 pages, which coincidentally takes me RIGHT up past the page for the last Club Baths, and even though it's 9:30, the idea of going ANYWAY possesses me, and I zip over to shower and shave and brush my teeth and put in my contacts and smoke, and I get out at 10:10, swinging down the stairs totally stoned, and there's someone WAITING to take me in, just after someone's GONE in, and about 20 people have signed in since 9:30, and others come in behind me, so I'll hardly be ALONE. Have fun with the INITIALS I give to the people to REMEMBER them (see next page), and start with ASH, and think of spelling ASHER OPLER, but then figure I really did S TWICE, so that makes ASSH, and then it's ASSHE, and I have the choice between AS SHE---and ASS HE---, but it only gets to ASSHEL, and I get home to write down the notes for the next page, GUZZLE a VERY early breakfast: two cookies, small milk, one slice of bread BARELY toasted with butter and TWO slices of bread WELL toasted with butter and A raspberry and B blueberry jams. Marvy-poo. Bed at 1:10, feeling just TINGLY GOODFINE!
DIARY 4170
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17. Unkosher, since the day's not over yet, but I just WANT to finish 10 pages for today while I finish the diary. Get to work at 9:15 and get right into the HBJ last chapter, actually FINISHING with everything that I wanted to do by 1 pm. By that time, Cynthia Litvin has called with a quiz show tryout tomorrow at 10:30 (obviously I was one of the LAST she called), so I phone Jo Satloff and get her to say it's just the SAME if I get it there tomorrow MORNING as this EVENING, so that I don't have to make two trips up there, and then we play Scrabble until 2:15, I win for a change, and get to underlining the INDEX for Foul [Fowl??] Cooking at 2:15, and at 4:15 I'm FINISHED with that, so I check on the phone for the spindle, and they say they won't repair it, only sell me a new one, so I call Marty, and he suggests phoning a Hi-Fi magazine and asking THEM, and then he says that THIS MORNING some gal dating Pavarotti called to say that he'd love Marty to be his AGENT, since he was so impressed with the repertory that he got together for him, loving 9 of the 21 songs, and Marty would get 10% of his $4,000 for an opera and $6,000 for a recital! Then he has opera notes and translations to do for Phillips, AND his class on "Voices of the Golden Age of Opera" start in the spring semester at the New School! So HE'S delighted, even saying that Jerri seems to be working OK with Christopher, and today, by a SECOND coincidence, is his 8th wedding anniversary. Then call Avi, and talk for an unsatisfactory half hour since he'd just awakened, but he and Arthur aren't having sex anymore, Arthur's gotten an ADDITIONAL (to being an accountant for Seagram's) part-time job from 6-10 EVERY night to pay off old debts! Ugh. Then home at 6 to watch a rather nice sunset, streaks of color just at the base of the Statue of Liberty at THIS date at 6:12, lovely cloud pastels, and up to find that THIS is our restaurant night, over to eat at the Near East, very good fish, and I get a Good Humor ice cream, great double dip royal chocolate swirl for 32¢, and get back to finish THESE ten pages at 9:45, feeling VERY good about everything, triumphant at BEING UP TO DATE WITH THE DIARY AGAIN, and saying goodnight to John, going out to Hank's for a "tryst" NOW at 9:48 pm! Then I DATE 2 diary VOLUME pages to 11:45, read Village Voice, smoke, John's in, and bed and sleep at 12:15.
DIARY 4172
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18. Lots of time to waste this morning as I don't have to get to HBJ until 9:30. She's sitting at her desk working as she ALWAYS is, and we go through the flags, and she admits that although I might not CHANGE what's wrong in the right way, I invariably point to something that IS wrong. Laugh about a number of things, but there's not much to give me, only Chapter 13, which is sad because that means I have to go back maybe TWICE more to pick up the remaining three chapters. Walk a bit late over to 52nd and Madison for the new offices of Ron Greenburg Productions, and get introduced to the Sperlings, and one of the assistants, the older fellow who looks like a smaller Pope Hill, greets me by NAME, which is a nice touch. Cynthia goes into her "du-DAH" of greeting and we clasp, and she gives me the $5 in an envelope and we get into the testing room with Gerri, who becomes my wife for the hour (see next page). Out rather promptly at 11:30, and I find that I've unbagged the winter clothes for a good reason: I've worn a raincoat for the first time this year, and it begins to RAIN. Walk the wrong direction for a couple of blocks, yet still get into the office early enough to call it 11:45. Chat with people and decide to have lunch early, but Ron's out with Syva and Barbara for lunch, so there's no Scrabble game, so I work through lunch from 1:15 to 5:15 and then leave the office at 5:30, having gotten Ron to say that EVEN though Tom won't look at the classroom activities until the weekend, I can come in tomorrow because "I like to play Scrabble," Ron admits easily. The sky is cloudy so I don't watch the sunset, and get home to find a note from John saying I should leave pilaf cooking for him, so I start (and latter finish) redating the LAST TWO diary volumes (THAT phase over in just one week), cook up the pilaf and set the table with Buddha, candles, and leaves and folded napkins in the wine glasses, and John gets in at 8, says that it has the "practiced casualness of the Japanese," which delights me, and we eat to 8:30, HE goes to the baths, I wash dishes, finish the diary, shave, shower, brush my teeth, put in contacts, smoke, and get out at 10:05 again for my first SECOND TIME TO THE BATHS IN ONE WEEK. Back at 1 to eat, bed at 1:25.
DIARY 4175
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19. Into the office at 9:30, play Scrabble from 2 to 3:15, when Ron admits that he, too, knows which the dark blank is, and I say NOT ONE word, and then he scratches his head, says "uhm" and says that I'd better not come in until he PHONES to say that Tom has approved the format for the Classroom Activities, which MAY be Monday, but which may not be until Tuesday. I say that he's got to get it next week, since I want to go on unemployment if there's no work from ACC. He says OK. Then the rumor mill is rampant: Random House, ITT, another non-publishing company, sales of 130 centers on the West Coast that would multiply the selling price of the company, since each center means $30,000 for the company. Sad time to leave it, and if I get the activities I just MIGHT work on them at the office to watch the final throes of the COMPANY. But I start telling Dror and Dick that I won't be around for very much longer, and they say they'll miss me. Yep. Finish Chapter 13 of HBJ at 3:45, talk a bit, and catch up on marking the music chapters for the index in 45 minutes from 4:15 to 5, but I just don't feel like getting into the Economics marking, so I fart around and leave at 5:20, signing out at 5:30, telling Ron "I HOPE I see you next week." Only 180 hours (or 5 weeks) work left IF they decide they still WANT the activities, since Tom decided NOT to include it in the FILM that promotes the program! THIS may depend on the sale of the centers, also! Ron says that he can DEFINITELY handle the 3 lessons a week for 4 months of grade 1 at the rate of 1 per day, and that the NEXT time they might need help is for the revisions of earlier-done grades. But I hope to be able to keep in touch, particularly with Ginny, who knows LOTS of people. 37½ hours this week. Home to watch the sunset and pick up laundry, and John's annoyed at my getting in at 6:25, saying dinner is at 6. The double-thick pork chops and fresh green beans are great, and I send for what I hope to be the LAST Record Club of America selections, and we're out to Ping Chong (see next page) at 7:50. Back just at 10 for "Our Dancing Daughters," rather good despite Schikel's pans of it, and LOTS of GOOD popcorn which John doesn't care for, and it's over at 11:45, I shower and bed.
DIARY 4177
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20. Put the electric blanket on the first time this season last night, and wake this morning feeling dry in the nose and mouth, baked in the body, stiff and unslept-in. Wonder if I'm coming down with something or if it's caused by the blanket. Think it might be some kind of transition and decide to try it again tonight (but the next morning I feel just as bad, even getting out of bed at 8:30, much later than usual. Tonight I'll try extra blankets and NOT the electricity except to warm it up, and we'll see what happens). Over to type five pages to catch up on the diary, and then get down to typing the cards for the cookbook for Dell at 9:45. Through with 2/3 the cards by 1:15, and John's out helping Sergio and Kenneth to move, so I have lunch by myself. Finish with the cards about 3:30, then get right into tearing them all apart (about 1000 of them) and sorting them out on the table, running into a photo finish with John's serving dinner at 6:10. He's still quiet and self-contained at dinner, so I hazard "Is there anything wrong?" and he says that my "serving" him on Thursday has gotten him to thinking that I don't do anything for him, and it takes him back to a conversation with Kathy Warner in which I was characterized as being selfish. We don't have much time to talk about it, but it depressed me greatly, and I examine it on the next page. He leaves at 7:15 and I get back to the cross-checking, and do the dishes about 10, doing them as he comes in. Finish the checking ready for typing at 10:45, and then out to buy the Times, and watch "Birth and Death of a Star" on TV which turns out to be narrated by John A. Wheeler, so I get out his book and his paper from IBM and start into THAT whole area again, but John's into bed at 11:45, and I join him then, hunting around in the blankets to find his face to kiss goodnight, thinking that I get to bed when HE wants to get to bed, and do a number of things that HE wants me to do, so that I can change to meet HIS "requirements," but I don't think that HE can change---even though the only thing I might want him to change is wanting ME to change. He has a relation with ME, not with the person he WANTS me to be!
DIARY 4179
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21. Up AGAIN wracked by what I take to be the effects of the electric blanket, and go through a bit of the Times before I get to work on the Dell Cookbook index at 9:30 and work through until 12, when we have lunch, inappropriately annoyed when I ask John if I can open his tuna for him and he says it's already opened, and I immediately think that he's done it BEFORE his shower, contrary to all past experience, and then he takes it out of the plastic container I'd noticed on the shelf before, so he'd opened it some OTHER day and then changed his mind for some reason, so there was a GOOD reason for his happening to not want me to open his JUST when I asked him, in the context of my doing things for him. We sit on the sofa and eat and talk, and so many of the things are so unpleasant that I can barely finish, and strew tuna all over my red pullover in frustration. ADMIT that the circumstances are bad for me in the relationship, and that I made a mistake in scheduling the trip for Russia but that I could see an END to my frustrations and long hours of work---also brought about because I DID sense my immanent release from ACC, which seems now to be official until I can take up my last task: the classroom activities, but today I'm officially "at liberty," which is---but that's tomorrow's page! But I'd almost finished with the index, having typed through page 31 and will obviously have no trouble finishing tomorrow's deadline tasks, and I suggested we go to Inwood Hill Park to talk, and he wants to go along the Narrows, so we do, and have another grueling talk (see next page), but he totally dumbfounds me (though I don't question it AT ALL) by coming back and embracing me and saying that he feels closer to me BECAUSE of the talk that we had. I watch the end of Magoo in "1000 Arabian Nights," a rather poor usage of cartooning in that it tries to make the characters true-to-life (except for the Vizier's slinking among pots in the market like a snake) and even the GENIE looked like out of "Thief of Baghdad." But the love scene was a good idea, though too flowery and automated with DRAWN kaleidoscopes and PASTEL flowers. Eat a GREAT dinner of chicken and liver in milk-flour binder, with FABULOUS squash Parmigiana with LOVELY mozzarella, and out to "Open Eye" (see following page) and back at 9:30, so I FINISH index 9:40-11, bed 11:50.
DIARY 4183
MONDAY, OCTOBER 22. [12 days behind, how CAN I keep doing this to myself, it's such a PAIN to do these day up to date? But I suppose I should console myself with the fact that it's LESS than two weeks, rather than MORE?] Ron's told me not to come in today, but when I call him about 3 he says that I should come in TOMORROW. Smallest possible layoff. Take advantage of the day off to go through the bookcase and file away the index stuff from the Library of Congress and the cookbook, separating out the stamps once again and putting things into better order in the bookcase. Over and fix the lamp, which had merely burned out (no, this is LATER in the week), and type four pages to keep up to date at THAT point, and get out some stray letters and bring my to-do list up to date, and put things away in general and feel good about staying home, except that I have to leave at 3:30 to take the index back to Dell, finding out that my paycheck, now 6 weeks late, had been mailed out today, and George Ryan says I should surely call Marie Longyear at McGraw Hill with the request for indexing, and I write all sorts of notes for myself and get back home to eat and get right out again to the double feature at the Quad: "Separate Peace," which has me quite torn apart by the loveliness and understated non-acting by Parker Robinson (and how I hated the woman next to me who said, "He LOOKS like a Parker Robinson," meaning I was sure, that he was effete and rich, though he certainly looked rich), and I'd FORGOTTEN that it seemed he HAD killed his friend, and the movie was a MARVELOUS re-creation of the book. "Paper Moon" had some wonderful fast conversations between Poppa and Tatum O'Neal, and the humor in the daughter controlling the father, knowing more about human nature and what they'd pay for a phony Bible was all very funny, though there was the AWFUL thought that there WAS a jump in the story when the floozy appeared in ANOTHER costume, and we DID get out about 20 minutes before I think we SHOULD have, and I WONDER if they cut the film THEMSELVES to close the theaters about the same time? Awful thought! Home about 12:30, and feel like coming, so I do with energy, but THAT may be tiring me out, too.
DIARY 4184
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23. To work at 9:30 and call Marie Longyear, but she's in a meeting, call Peter and arrange to pick up the book tonight, call Arnie and chat, call Dick Smith and Alan Henderson and I'm playing pinochle with them tomorrow, call Marty and arrange to have lunch with him tomorrow so that I can return the Scandinavian language book to him, and Ron's out on some trip to Baltimore or somewhere, but he's put technical art on my desk to check out, unit books to remove the flags from, and I settle down to rewrite the introduction to the Classroom Activities, essentially melding the write-ups of Sally and Jane Cohen, and then get started on the editing and changing. Day is sort of a bore without Ron there to provide amusement and Scrabble, and I merely read the newspaper during lunch, feeling NOT like staying with the Proust. [And THIS MOMENT I switch from the Proust, which is literally slowing me down literarily, to Science Fiction, to try to reduce the number of books on my SHELF to be read, having LIKED the two sci-fi books, even though they weren't very GOOD, I swept through on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.] Out at 4:30 to get to Peter's for the book, and he talks and talks so that I don't have time to check out the 10th Street pier that John's been done in a couple of times, nor to look at the SPECTACULAR sunset ripping the clouds to bloody shreds, only to get down Christopher to the Studio Bookshop and find that my memories of the Tom drawings were misleading, there ARE no good ones to buy, and get "Locker Room" drawings which are sexy. Then over to "Mother Courage" with a road crew hammering away outside, and the touted restaurant isn't very special, we're made to sit at a small table, and only a customer with an ENORMOUS cock down a faded denim leg makes any permanent memory of the place, except that it was rather a disappointment, except for the fact that the spinach was fresh. And we DID beat the crowd, since it was written up in the Village Voice THIS week. Then to Choreoconcerts (see next page) at Hunter, and back, John to bed at 11:30 and I sneak in the book in my sweater and throw it into the closet with elaborate casualness, then shower and wash my hair and get out to jerk off slowly, frustrated that the LAMP has burned out, on the first day that I really WANTED it to see the NEW book!
DIARY 4186
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24. Have so many things to pack up to take with me that I don't get to work until 10, having taken to stopping to eat in the Italian place downstairs, where two eggs (small, to be sure) and toast (and marmalade, which I always get, but it's never on the shelf, they always have to root for it) and coffee are only 49¢ plus 4¢ tax, 53¢ of tipless cafeteria breakfasting which is surely far more nourishing that the 21¢ for the apple strudel and coffee from the counter downstairs in the building. Tom DOES reply to my changes, saying that they look OK, and I now have full control of the Classroom Activities formats; call Marie Longyear who tells me to SEND a resume to someone in her office, call John Casarino and Jo Satloff and bounce around the dates that John came up with for dinner, and Jo and her husband will be over Sunday, unless their various children hold them back with visits from college unexpectedly, and I start Madeline Sunshine typing on the revised formats. Leave at 12 to meet Marty at the Lomito place, and it's not very interesting, but slightly different, then have time to kill before getting to Jo's, so I stop to buy a card for his cousin Stevie's new baby---the cute kid I remember from holiday dinners is now some high-level assistant to Nadjari---stop in the Bowery Savings Bank's huge office on 42nd to open his first savings account in ages, get up at 1:15 to find that Ruth's at LUNCH and the building's security is called into question when I'm seen roaming the halls, over to Jo and questions, and then BACK to Ruth, who apologizes, types me up a letter, and I get back at 3, signing out for the usual 1/2 hour lunch REGARDLESS, and leave at 6:30 to subway to 7:40 up to Alan's in the Bronx, where his nicely whacky grandma has roast AND fried chicken and potato salad and cake and ice cream and PIE and ice cream and iced tea and grapefruit juice and M&Ms and miniature candy bars, and I remember the rules only vaguely, but Alan and I WIN, thanks, as Alan's grandma would have it, to Dick's stupidity, and it's a lot of fun, and we talk about Mattachine and poor Don, and I leave my yellow pullover and subway back with Dick on a LOUD thing (and he asks me to be president, but can only agree that Bob Burdick would make a good replacement) of a train, and back at 1:30, feeling quite tired but happy with the pinochle circuit.
DIARY 4187
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25. Ron OKed the idea of working at home and billing the time on the next day as if I'd been there, so I work from 9 to 12 on HBJ, but I just don't feel like doing anything more, not even like keeping up with the diary, which I really SHOULD HAVE done on that day, but after lunch and John's gone out, I start washing the windows in the bedroom for the first time this year (and sadly find out that 25 straight days WITHOUT rain stops on the 28th, and I could have had three MORE clean weeks if I'd done them at the START of the period, almost beating the rainless record of 27 days in New York City), and they go well until I get to the three back ones, after going up the fire escape to the roof to find that the view is not really much, and the stair top cuts the roof in HALF, so I can't get to the front. But then struggle to open the other windows, and get everything but the last window open, and after straining and straining (Wagner playing on the record player) I finally decide it's not opening because it's painted shut on the OUTSIDE, and hang out my feet and hand to open to from the BACK, and finally it thunders up, but not very far, since the frames are quite warped, bowed outward, but I get the final swipes achingly done JUST as the window cleaning solution gives out, and THEN John says that I should only use cleanser and water since the grime outside only smears with ammonia. Thanks. Then the floor's crumby with pieces of paint, and so I take the opportunity to vacuum after quickly dusting, and everything's done by the time John gets back at 6, and we clean up for David's concert---no, John's at class, so I have to meet him there, and I'm greatly tempted to just not GO and go to the baths instead, but subway in and meet Gerald and sit on the stoop listening to the pleasant-voiced David Davis singing Bach's Cantata 82, "Ich habe genug," but it's very slow, the audience fidgets, and John's ready to leave at 9, so we're back to smoke and get out to the baths ANYWAY, which is pleasant (see next page), but I forget to even record the MNEMONICS I had to generate to remember who I had, so it's gonna be rough. But at least the memory NOW is far better than NO MEMORY AT ALL, isn't it?
DIARY 4189
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26. Into work at 9 and sign up for 4 hours yesterday without having DONE anything for it, but the sky doesn't fall in. Work all day on editing, Ruth Rozman brings in the LAST of the pages for the School Wars book for me to index, I leave at lunchtime for two more boxes of index cards and the coconut oil shampoo which John buys two MORE bottles of in exactly one WEEK, since he'd emptied one bottle into his reserve bottles, and I'd taken one bottle for my own. Diane talks for a long time about working (or not working) in the office, and Alice is in and we chat, and Dick Sime comes past (being out next week because he gets his tonsils out), and Dror sits around for at least an hour. Get 17 classroom activities edited this week, which is a pretty good weekly average, but still Ron doesn't know if the project is going to be continued, and NOW the rumor is that Charles Walther and Frank Gill are thinking of running Century 21 THEMSELVES. Home and dinner and dishes and work on the last sections of the HBJ book from 8:20 to 11:30, finding that I put on far fewer flags now that it's getting close to the end of the book, and it's harder because Jo hasn't been through the flags from the author when SHE got them back, but since she has to go through them all anyway, it's OK, particularly since they don't affect my work much. John's out somewhere, and at 11:30 I watch "The Frogs" on TV, with a crotchety Ray Milland who's killed by them at the end, and a BEAUTIFUL crotchy Sam Elliott who trusts his pelvis forward in every possible scene, showing a NICE cock-line down his RIGHT leg, through his shirtless scenes show him to be bulky but not terribly defined, with sexy hairlines on his body. Watch the end of "Sly and the Family Stone" special after John gets in from the bar, and that's over at 2:30, and THEN I take myself to coming with the fixed light, doing it very nicely, and I seem to settle into a WANTING to stay awake VERY late, having two RECORD nights next week, and not really feeling like going to bed when it's time---and CERTAINLY not feeling like getting UP the NEXT morning. Things seem to be shifting around, and I hear echoes of "Something's WRONG" forming.
DIARY 4190
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27. Up about 9, laying for a bit after John gets out of bed at 8, and have breakfast and get to work on the copyediting from 10 to 12, stopping for lunch, and from 12:30 to 6, and finish with enough so that it's obvious I'll be able to finish tomorrow and maybe even get to something ELSE, which makes me happy, seeming finally to be SLOWLY getting out from under the pressures of work. After dinner John says he's going to take a nap, and he'd been talking about his costume "World Trade Center" with a thick rope he found on the site with a dishcloth around the cock, and I had enough time to think that I might go along to the Spencer Church that he was trying to crash, so when he napped I'd gotten out everything I needed from the bedroom to try an idea with belts, having all his out, and I put it all together and it looked so good and worked so well when I finally got it all figured out that I even copied down the instructions so that after I took it off to shower, I could put it all back ON. I started with the tight blue t-shirt and the silver pants, added John's round-buckled belt as a chest expander, buckle in front [start buckle UNDER chest band, around neck, to arm for the LEFT-arm doubled (the older pair) under chest expander, around arm, two buckles under the arm. Right-arm doublet (same kind of belts) under chest expander, around arm, and chest expander END goes OVER this. Black-black doublet on LEFT shoulder, UNDER front and back) chest band, buckle over crotch, belt end hanging down: vertical doublet. Black-brown doublet (inside surface of this against OUTSIDE surface of vertical doublet around RIGHT thigh), brown small belt, put through buckle twice, around neck, and then the blue pullover and the blue pants to cover up the stuff for walking through the street, and I'd started with sandals, but when I tried the boots, they were perfect, so I took out the laces and polished them with the over-all scuff coating again, and then had just enough time to shave and shower and brush my teeth before starting to dress AGAIN and getting out at 9:45 for the Spencer Church (see next page). Home at 3 am, totally plastered out of my mind, falling drunk into bed much too late.
DIARY 4193
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28. Wake at 8 and feel totally awful. John's out to get the Times and I stay in bed and read a bit of the entertainment section, and that turns my stomach and I have to lay back down. Feel slightly hungry and get into the kitchen to make myself some soft-boiled eggs, and they taste VERY good, but still I don't feel like working, which is a pity, since I have to finish the last of the HBJ pages today, wanted to start in on the Rozman index and do some of my OWN stuff---the diary is now a week behind, the correspondence drawer is building up, and I keep pushing things aside, not having done ANYTHING on Singer or the writing since I finished DATING the stupid books. Entirely frustrated about being sick at this point, but I get up to watch "Camera Three" and feel awful and get back to bed. John's out for a walk, later saying that he couldn't stand to see me fighting being sick: it's a fact and I have to admit to it. I say that I seem to get sick JUST when I'd have some spare time, which leads me to think that I could fight it off THEN, so why can't I fight if off now? He said it just makes the illness hang on longer, and I said I'd probably been ill for the last part of last week, but it just needed the extra booze to work whatever magic there is on my stomach and liver to put me totally out of commission. But by 2 I can't stand lying and thinking anymore, so I get the paper around me and read it all, and when he's not back and I don't feel like getting out of bed, I indulge myself in BOTH Times puzzles, but that sort of finishes me off, so I lie down until about 5:30, when I figure I'm feeling good enough to get up and dress for dinner. That goes OK, and I finish the dishes and then get back to work on HBJ from 7:45 to 8:30, then stop to watch the ice-skating special from Moscow and Leningrad (under the snow, just to get me used to it) (and I'd turned on the "Phantom India" and actually RE-WATCHED "Dream and Reality," again being hypnotized by his soft stoned commentary), and then back to FINISH it all from 9:30 to 10:15, and come up with a final bill, after agitation, of $517.50, which I type up for Jo, and then get over to fall into bed, hoping to be OVER this by tomorrow.
DIARY 4194
MONDAY, OCTOBER 29. Raining fantastically hard outside, ending any idea of a least-rainy October record, and Cynthia calls for a 1½ hour thing on Thursday for ANOTHER tryout from 5:30-7, and she says I should write UP the plot for the TV quiz show that I have for Ron Greenburg, and even talk with John about it this evening, and he puts me into thinking that having CELEBRITIES choose the contestants would be a good idea, except that they're afraid of appearing stupid, but if they're only CHOOSING contestants, there's no CHANCE of seeming stupid. Ron says he has no time for Scrabble, and then Madeline's in (I didn't connect that Ron said she was very slow) and WE start to play with BOTH sets, but it takes a LONG time, and I set a time limit of 2:45 for the game, and I win, which is neat, since she won from Ron. Separate the tiles into two sets and take home the DARKER of the two, which will make our playing better (in fact, I get far MORE blank tiles now than I did before, when I KNEW where the other was, and avoided it), and then leave at 4 because Jo says SHE'S preparing dinner this evening and has to leave just at 5, so I get up there on the subway and take my pants off in her office and goof on taking italics AWAY from grid coordinates, and she castigates me about changing from WILL to WOULD without changing IS to WERE in the FIRST part of the statement. She looks at my bill and says she doesn't think I'll have any trouble getting it, and get the check on FRIDAY, TRULY a record payment time! Home wetter inside from sweating on the crowded Lexington subway than anything else, too miserable to read, and dinner and dishes and get to work on the School Wars index from 7:30 to 11, getting about half through, and John's out at some dance performance someplace, having wanted to go LAST night but didn't since there were so many other things he wanted to do this week, and I'm still feeling quite tired, thinking I should probably stop jerking off, too, to conserve my energies, and get into bed without even smoking, except that the woman tromping around upstairs and the music coming from DOWNSTAIRS makes me put in the earplugs again, which means I don't hear the cats yowling outside, either, in the morning.
DIARY 4195
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30. Stayed home today from ACC, finding later that I missed a day of everyone doing absolutely nothing except compare rumors about what was going to happen to everyone, seeing as all the freelance art people have been given notice to leave on Friday, and I got myself up and eaten by 8, to start on the School Wars index again, finishing the underlining by 10:30, and Ruth's been calling and calling and changing specifications, until finally she called on Wednesday and said it MIGHT be 1200 or it MIGHT be 1800 lines, and I decide to WAIT until MONDAY to act according to her SPECS before doing ANYTHING, even if I DO have to take a day or two off ACC to finish her index by Friday. Then I sort through the top drawer to see what to do next, and find that I haven't gotten the dates for the Dewees article yet. And decide to go into the office this evening, with all the other things I have to do, and before I do THAT, I should see what information there is HERE, so the rest of the day (John's working at his volunteer work at the Lincoln Center Dance Collection working with the correspondence and memorabilia collection of some poor fellow who was Dance Coordinator at the Brooklyn Museum) I spend shuffling through the Mattachine stuff and preparing for my evening, and get out at 4:30, fearing to be late, and stop in the Sci-Fi bookstore to buy two books that had been recommended to me, then over to get the coffee filter papers for John from the Schapira shop on 10th, then down to Mattachine to find Don there at 5:15, so I don't get to test if my keys work or not, and we chat, I tell him about Marge and me speaking at Hunter on the 13th of December, say I'm busy until then, and think about what Dick said on Thursday about holding a work moratorium against poor Don until he resigns. He says how discouraged he's been getting, how no one comes in, except Jay Friend, who just sits and does nothing, and how NO one's been working on the library except Bob Burdick. I sort through lots of files and find SOME information (got all the dope on the Discussion groups from my stuff at home), and leave at 6 to meet John at Pandora's Pot, not bad, not good, and I get back to go to the baths (see next page) after reading part of Vance's "Dying Earth" waiting for him, and back at 12:50 to FINISH that book, and read "Sturgeon is Alive and Well" until 4 am, feeling VERY strange!
DIARY 4197
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31. SLEEP till 9:15, and get up to find that my eyes have been clouded by wearing the contacts from 9-4, 7 hours without any previous indoctrination, so it doesn't seem like the time to stay home and do indexing work which uses my eyes so much, so I decide to go to work today and tomorrow and take off Friday. Just hit the last few minutes of the breakfast place for my scrambled eggs, which taste just MARVELOUS on the stomach, and get up to find that there's been a memo just circulated, saying that essentially everyone has just been given two weeks notice, except those that Tom has talked to. I write the following note to myself at work: Ruth Rozman calls with ANOTHER change. Walther memo sent around. Yesterday was NO work, as today, and Jerry says that Walther and Gill might run school department themselves. Rumors start sifting down: 15th floor staff cut to 4 from the 20 or 25 up there; Pete Gibson told to cut his staff down to 2, probably Marilyn Oppolito, Coordinator, and Lee Kassen, Chief Engineer; Medical Department (big and the biggest moneymaker) going practically intact; meeting called in Tom's office at 3:30 for the PERMANENT people, but I want to GO. I ask Ginny Croft and she says I'd be kicked out. So I stand outside and listen for the 120 minutes during which Tom talks to the 22 people, saying there's to be an 80% cut! (which far surpasses what I said to Danie: "By the tone of it, it's at least 50% of the staff). So of the 22 people, 17 got two weeks' notice as of that day. Of the 5 left, it's probably Pete and Ginny and Ron(?) and Lee and one of the "big female editors (Shirley, Hedda, Linda). [And my predictions weren't TOO far wrong, since it turned out to be Pete and Ginny and Ron and Bill Mutter and Shirley and Patty Leach (who is who I thought was Linda Scoppa, who left weeks ago) and Jerry Steinhart and all the marketing people and of course Fraya. Bruce got HIS notice, it turns out, and when Ann Herrick asked, "When will the ax fall,"? Tom looks at her and says "3.30." Tom SAYS, "I know I've been coming at 10 and taking 2-hour lunches in the immediate past, but there were so many problems that there wasn't any reason for me to concern
DIARY 4
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1. In to work at 9:30, feeling just awful, and still having vague halos around my eyes from the contact-lens abuse of Tuesday. Work on the Classroom Activities between other interests: go see Rodelinde, and it's the same up there: only those INTERVIEWED stay, all the OTHERS have two weeks' notice. But as FAR as she knows, the commitments on the books are continuing. Ron says I work for GINNY, too, and she gives me the Reading Achievement Library Teacher's Guide to copyedit! FANTASTIC! I ask Hedda a couple of questions about it, but she doesn't seem too interested in answering me, since she's been there five years and has just been given two weeks' notice. Then about lunchtime I decide that I MUST have shoes for the tryouts this evening, so I walk over to Broadway and 32nd, where I remember some kind of discount store, and buy a pair of navy-style black shoes which are made in POLAND for $10.99, and a pair of white sneakers, which I needed a couple of times THIS year and will have NEXT year, for $1.99, of somewhat BETTER quality than the kind I USED to guy for $1.99. So I spend $13.91 for TWO pairs of shoes for HALF the price of a NORMAL pair of shoes. They hurt rather fiercely on the outstep, the socks seem to move down in them, and the toes seem very clunky, but they're shoes, and they're mine! Scrabble and everyone remarks about that, and then I leave at 5 to get up to the tryout for "Toss Up" again, and THEY have the bad news that "Who, What Where," has been dropped from the air at the end of the season, after only 4 years, so they're rather glum, too (see next page). Out thankfully early at 6:45, and subway home to find that Merit Farms is OUT of ribs and chicken, so I settle for anything, namely fish, and get home at 7:35 to find Dick already standing in the hallway, saying that his plans had changed, and I'm up to eat and chat, then John gets in and Alan arrives immediately after, so we get to the game about 8:15, and John's depressed and very quiet, but at least he isn't complaining, and the crackers and the M&Ms and the rice pudding all go down very nicely with the wine and Grand Marnier and ice water, and DICK AND I win the game, 4-3, from John and Alan. Fun night!
DIARY 4201
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2. Work from 9:45 to 5:30, 31¼ hours this week, mostly off the Classroom Activities, except to sign in the seven new ones that came in yesterday, to work on the Teacher's Guide, getting SOME answers from Hedda, checking into the Books in Print for titles and dates of publication, and talk to Barbara Weller on the phone and we chat about Sally, to whom she's going to write about ACC. I manage to get through half the copyediting, 50 books, and it's fun to read. Home in the dark and dinner with the Paisano wine tasting GOOD with the hamburger, and we get to talking about structure as applied to dance, and it gets VERY uncomfortable (see following page). Then I shower to wash my hair, do the dishes, shave and brush my teeth and put in my contacts just as Arnie arrives for Tsi-Dun at 8 with lots of books on Russia for me to borrow and sharp Hungarian paprika for John and leaflets of his cooking school and dining-serving activities. We smoke a pipeful and get out at 8:10, sit in the car outside the apartment complex for a bit while we smoke another two pipes and Arnie tells us about his experiences in Europe, and then we're into the apartment for surely the better Tsi-Dun of the year (start here and to next page). Ten people sitting in the living room with their CLOTHES on, except Tony is lying on the sofa with only shorts on and someone else is sitting in a chair with his pants off. But the lights are bright and nothing seems about to start, so I think about it a bit, enjoying the buzz, and then calmly undress and sit down in a chair, waiting for the action to start. Even when the lights lower, there's no rush for my bod, so into the bedroom where things are going on that I don't care to join in with, and back to the living room for a beer, drink it, see the blond doll come in, and then follow someone blond and short into the bedroom, but it really never works, just no electricity passing and he never gets hard, and though he has a nice body I don't get hard, either, and let that pass. Support someone from the back, squeezing tits, as he leans against me and comes, which is pleasant, and kiss Jim Garrison a bit, and then the blond is in playing with himself, and we neck, I do him, and he holds me up while
DIARY 4204
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3. Up just after 8 and get over for cereal for breakfast and start on the diary pages, getting through 21 to catch up to date, but that's broken by lunch and a conversation recorded on the previous page. Then finish and sort out all the letters I have to write again, getting the easy things like bills out of the way, and then write a long letter to Rita and send back the $300 that I owe her. About 4 John asks if I want to see a play, which I don't, but I call Bob Grossman and arrange to go over there at 10, which coincidentally is the time John's play starts this evening. I fix the transformer, which had had one wire completely off the hook, no wonder I had trouble with it, and when I get back into the apartment from doing something at 5, he's sitting reading and we continue the conversation from earlier, and I come to the conclusion that I'm so annoyed by anything that I don't understand that I have to degrade or belittle it by saying that it's not worth anything. John seems to think that smacks of real truth, and at dinner he says that he's feeling more relaxed with me than he has in AGES. Also during the conversation, he says that he's sad that we seem to have drifted apart in sex, and he says that it used to be a MUTUAL thing, but lately it hasn't been happening at all. I point out that I'd said in the PAST that I had the impression that I initiated sex all the time, and I'd TOLD him that I wasn't initiating sex anymore, so didn't he see any contradiction between his statements that it's a MUTUAL thing, and my saying I WASN'T starting anything, and his saying that nothing's been happening. It seems he can't think about that, since he just retorts, "Well, what difference does it make?" I also think, then, about his statements that he's feeling so ALONE, so ISOLATED from everyone, and I remember MY feelings of frustration and loneliness that he hadn't wanted sex with me, and I felt quite sorry for him, later, and even at the time I had the wit to say, "Well I'd be happy to go back to starting things if I knew that, rather than being pressured into it, or feeling duty-bound to "perform" as you put it, you just SAY, "No, let's stop now," or "Let's play all you want,
DIARY 4207
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4. Wake about 8 and lay until 9, then up to get over to work on correspondence, writing to Mom and Paul and Edgardo and Peter, finally finishing everything, and getting the original of the new resume ready for xeroxing tomorrow, "inadvertently" leaving it on top of the typewriter so that I can ask Jo if she minds my giving her name to Literary Market Place and she says fine. The letters take most of the day, and John's cooking away at many things for tonight. Watch "Phantom India" at 5, "A Look at Castes," and only GOODY is: 560,000 villages house 80% of the people!!! I shower and get ready for their entrance at 6:30, and they're quite on time, bringing only ONE bottle of Mateus, and I'm afraid it's going to be a difficultly dry evening, but John has the Fuki plum wine, which they like despite its sweetness, and when I tell Len that I collect stamps, his real or imagined coldness leaves, and he's over to the other side (without Jo; John had given me instructions that I wasn't to ASK if they wanted to see all the apartment, but if THEY asked to see it, I could show them) and looking at the covers, exclaiming about the goodness of some of the Canadian ones, then we're over to look at the album, and he says I have a GREAT US and a UN collection, and he tells me about the "buy" of early US PASTED IN THEIR ORIGINAL GUM to sheets of paper, with an "x" through the 10¢ Columbian because he liked only USED stamps. ARGH. We talk about stamps after talking about his daughter who's dropped out of college, and they talk about HIS 4 and HER 3 and the one in-law who's the best, and then THAT topic is made out of bounds. We talk about our travels for a bit, about his business of taxing for unemployment, and when she says we're not to talk about THAT, I say "That's Three." Hot eggplant and cheese for appetizer, cold Greek salad and sweet rolls for MAIN course, and HOT apple and whipped cream for dessert. The apple dessert has gone flat because all the brown sugar leaked away onto the stove bottom, and the saffron buns are rather hard and slightly burnt (see a portion sawed off on Jo's plate, AND they have to leave at 9:15 to get back to get their car into the garage before it's locked at 10. So the evening is short, and though the heat had been off, the hot water comes on JUST in time for me to wash ALL the dishes, and get smoking and crawl into bed at 11:15 with John, quickly falling asleep, feeling good about the accomplishments.
DIARY 4208
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5. To work at 9:30 but sign in at 9 since chart isn't there! AFTER we have SEX in the morning, John coming nicely (we woke at 7 for it, special almost), and I letting him whack away a BIT too long before I come, and we lie together and then I get out to work, feeling good that it's happened AT LAST. Lots of talk at work, and I've made up a LIST of things to do: call AGAIN for the Academic Press name and address; check that Betty Borger at Macmillan HAS my name and will call when she gets an index; get the SPELLING of Hannemann from McGraw Hill; get my resumes XEROXED by sending it in, and they DO give me the 10 I ask for; get Ginny Croft and Janet Mais' new address for my resume; get the FINAL line count---2000!---from Ruth; tell Delete there's no Chapter 8 that I have; call Dick and probably set 2 pm Saturday for a meeting at Mattachine; and check ALL the names I've given to LMP. That takes PRACTICALLY all morning, do bit of Reading Achievement Library Writing editing, and there's technical art to check with the SEXY Dickson, YUM, and talk with Dror and Ginny and Dick, who's back from having his tonsils out, and Scrabble with Ron and talk about science fiction and read DONALD DUCK comic books that the cross-eyed guy brought in. What an INCREDIBLE day for $56! Home at 6 and wash my hair and they're here RIGHT at 7 with a bottle of wine, and George and John BOTH look great, I have a bit of a whine with the blender but get GOOD frozen daiquiris out in time, then the beef bourguignon is very good, the salads are the same that gave me the awful aftertaste all day today, and John's made a JELLY roll for dessert. They don't leave until 11, talking about early sexual experiences, people they knew from school, cock measuring sessions in Vietnam, sessions in the south, troubles with final exams, which John has finished and George is just going into, and the sexy guy from the Gibbs is due up on Wednesday! Talk about Russia a bit, but will get most of it on Friday when we go there. They love the apartment, John shows over everything, but we don't smoke, sadly, since they ARE both sexy. It's too late to tackle the MOUNTAIN of dinner plates, salad plates, bread plates, dessert plates, and saucers, and the daiquiri, wine, and liquor glasses before bedtime, I just fall in, and WAKE about 1 am and THINK for about an hour, hassled by the INDEX that WON'T be done by Friday, sadly, and "The Godfather" that I WON'T have time to see. DAMN!
DIARY 4209
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6. Up at 8 to do all the dishes, almost until 10, then out to vote, and there are so MANY other candidates for Mayor that it seems that Youngstein (the only one to come DIRECTLY out for anti-homosexual, anti-prostitute, anti-drug law repeals) wasn't anyone to vote for as a protest, so like, I hope, lots of others, I voted for Blumenthal and then chose my usual ritual that whoever had been nominated by TWO parties, usually Liberal and either Republican or Democrat, I'd vote for, or else merely the Liberal party. To work just after 10:30, and work on the last of the editing of the RAL teacher's guide, start back on Classroom Activities, call Ruth to tell her I'd get the index in on Monday, try to shop for "Delta Dawn" but they don't have it at Hamptons, and leave at 5:30 after FRAYA seems to be leaving. Pretty soon there WILL be no one there. Home with the shoes from long ago (old ones that I'd left there when I bought new ones), eat at 6:15, seeming to get earlier and earlier, do dishes, John goes to baths at 8 while I'm typing five pages of diary and sending out the resumes to Academic Press and McGraw-Hill, saying that I'm not really available until after December 7, and then it's 9:30 and I don't feel like showering (really don't feel like changing my clothes) and I'm smoking just before 10 when John comes BACK. I finish smoking as he turns on the TV and settles down to a quiet evening at home which I so much wish I had, and I get next door (see next pages) for a NOTHING evening, first time EVER, I think, and leave at 12:45, getting into the kitchen to hungrily put a muffin into the toaster and I put the dishes away, and the muffin isn't enough, so I get down the cereal and start munching on it dry, then get out the bowl and have it with MILK, feeling silly, but I AM hungry and HADN'T had breakfast this morning, so this is it. Feel that this is getting out of hand, however, since I haven't exercised in a long time, getting a pot back, and I'm feeling tired and lethargic with no idea how to get rid of it. But don't feel like jerking off at all, and crawl into bed so tired I even forget to turn the heating dial down from the "warm-up" initial dialing of 7, and in the morning I'm QUITE warm and dragged out.
DIARY 4212
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7. Up late, about 8:30, and have breakfast and don't get to work on the School War indexing until 9:30, typing the basic cards for pages 1-192 in just 2¼ hours, but then find I have only 412 lines for the entire first half, which is a big goof when I'm aiming for 2000 lines, and I have to redo the whole first half. So I work on that task until 6, when we have dinner, and I signed in at work that I worked from 9 to 1 today though I didn't do a THING. But on one, of course, had anything to say about it. Then after dinner type three diary pages to get up to date, and then it's time to leave at 7:15 for Chiang Ching at Town Hall. There's a huge crowd, and John gets VERY angry at some critic who wants someone to pick up her tickets so that she doesn't have to wait in line, and I'm in to see Mike Mao, and he's eager to talk with me, and we chat during intermission of the performance (see next page). He's been dancing even during taking some sort of tests which he took without telling his family, and when he talks about how his sisters "screamed," the shrillness of his voice and the flurry of hands is so EXACTLY like Madge's that it's probably a good thing that he's moved from the apartment up into Boston. He likes the dancing there, hoping to get a tour to Europe next summer, and Harvard's sending him to Japan and maybe even China, for which I envy him, and he's thinking of taking the trans-Siberian Express all the way up to Norway, which he was happy to hear I'd seen. He's coming to town in a few weeks and would like to have lunch with me, and since he has no pencil I just tell him John's name in Brooklyn and I hope he remembers it, though NOW I think I was rather silly for not telling him he could get my number from MADGE. John's sunk into his book during the performance's pauses, and we both jump on the guys next to us who want to take photos of the dances, and some idiot down in the first row has a movie camera going even though the GIRL ON THE MICROPHONE announced that they didn't want pictures taken. I'm very tired coming out at 10:30, and feel like I might have a cold coming on, so I shower and get immediately to bed, not even smoking.
DIARY 4214
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8. Get to work at 8 and Dick Sime gives me copyediting from Patty Leach on Readiness Objectives, but I don't know how much he wants me to do on them, so I go back to the Z's until he gets in, and then get started on the work. Scrabble as usual and everyone's doing less and less. I'm keeping a list of people who are staying at work, and it gets shorter and shorter as even the people who have been offered the chance to STAY are leaving, possibly to ensure getting their severance pay before Appleton isn't a part of Meredith anymore. Work until 5:30, but Ron's left before I could say that I'm not coming in to work tomorrow, so I leave a note on the desk and leave. John's at class and I'm eating dinner when Dick calls and says that both he and Alan and Alan's grandmother are feeling fluish, so they don't think they'll be over, and I'm relieved, since I've been evaluating that I won't be able to finish the index before the weekend ANYWAY, and I've even begun thinking that it might take even longer, but I finish with the first half and estimate that I've MAYBE gotten up to 600 lines, which is very discouraging, and I know that I have to expand lots of cards. Work from 8:30 to 12:30, and then my mind is mulling over the work I have to do, so I have to figure out what I'm doing. Since I'm estimating getting $500 on this for the 25¢ per line for 2000 lines (which is really going to be a PAIN), at $12.50 an hour that was 40 hours, but now it looks like it's going to take at least 50 hours, so I've done 17 and have 33 to go on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (along with the party at John Casarino's on Friday night, the travel class and the Mattachine meeting on Saturday afternoon and the Gymnastics program on TV on Saturday evening and whatever TV Sunday affords), so I schedule Friday 8-6 for re-doing the last half, 10 hours; Saturday 8-9 and 5-12 for typing the cards for the last half (no, that was Friday, too) (really expanding both halves), 8 hours, and Sunday 8-12 with an hour off for eating, or 15 hours, which DOES total 33 hours, for alphabetizing, typing, and proofreading, and it AGAIN looks as if it can be done, so I smoke and get into bed feeling good about it.
DIARY 4215
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9. From 8 am to 10:15 I redo the second half, underlining just about EVERYTHING, and from 10:15-11 I type half the cards for the second half and I don't know what I do during the middle, except talk to John or fuss about mail or something. Back at 1:45 to 2:30 to type the cards for the second half of the second half, and then from 2:30 to 6:15 I go through adding numbers to cards for the second half, and then it's time to clean up for John Casarino's party. Get there at 7:50, and to my surprise we're NOT the first ones there, but the main attraction is the apartment: into a Chinese-golden mirrored hallway for his usual maid and her husband taking the coats and serving drinks, and I have ONE drink through the evening, very conscious of my stomach. Talk to a few neatly-dressed older men, but there're not too many people interested in me who are interesting, and most of the cute ones are talking with their own little groups. Henry had done the sleeping platform, the reliefs on the walls, the banks of indirect lights against the screen in the living room, and the shelves of books in spotlights (where John wants to contribute one of his covers for effect) compete with the shrimp and sauce and other goodies on the table in the office, as opposed to the larger table of paté and cheeses and breads and crackers in the living room. I sit on the sofa for a long time listening to the ditsy queens talking about their apartments and layouts and works of art, marveling at the emptiness of it all, and then hear someone talking about Kyoto, and go up to talk to someone and Alvin, and Alvin and I talk for a couple of hours about travel to Pagan and Cambodia and Japan and elsewhere, the only high-point of the evening. There's a joint going around, he leaves at 9:30, and I'm into the living room for a tall gray-haired guy and an older intense-eyed fellow who says that I'm a doll but my hair will have to go, and there are joints and joints, and I get slightly high and look amusedly on at all the conversations going on around, all the amateur psychoanalyses, and John talking with an older black, but finally about 10:30 I can't take it and suggest we leave, and we do, and I collapse into bed, feeling good to be there, concerned about the index.
DIARY 4216
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10. Up at 9 and over quickly again to work, and alphabetize for an unknown period of time, and get 20 of the 70 cards expanded, with the Board of Education having an enormous quantity, and it's VERY slow going, and I fear again that I won't be finished on schedule. It's 11 when I recall the travel class that I was supposed to go to, but I figure since I missed the first 2 and will miss one the week I'm in Russia, I might as well pass up this cycle and try for a later one where I can get ALL the lessons, to learn as much as I can while I'm devoting the time to it, so I keep working with a clear mind. Lunch and talk with John about my frustrations at getting the line-count upward, and then phone Dick at Mattachine to say that I really can't see that my presence would add much, Alan will be late, Henry will be there, so I say I'll call at 4. Keep on working and it's VERY slow but neat-feeling to get the entries expanded nicely, and when I phone, Henry's on the way out, not talking to me, and Dick says the plan of "doing nothing" has worked with Henry TOO well, in that he won't go to the Board of Directors to say they're OWING him $500 and are LIABLE TO BE SUED for it to give them an idea of the seriousness of their position, but he's willing to wait. I think to take the matter to the membership, but Russell Barnes says again and again that he doesn't want to "split the thing wide open," and Dick rightly says that people don't want to support a dying organization, and John seems to think that it IS dead, and about time too, saying that the library could be donated to the Jefferson Market Library as a memorial and that's the end of that. Alan's supposed to tell the Board about their financial responsibility, didn't show up, and we all decide to wait until the first of the year and THEN try to pull it out---if we can. I watch the Gymnasts after dinner from 6:40 to 8, and then come out of sheer frustration, and recover from the popper and get back to work from 9 to 1:30, getting half done with expansion, with 9 MORE hours needed for expansion, so I probably WILL have to continue working on it on Monday---only hope I can get it done THEN!
DIARY 4217
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11. Up reluctantly from bed at 8:20, feeling that I'm locked into a job that I MUST finish, and work until 10:20 while John gets the paper, I look through for a TV schedule, and then work until 11 when I go over to hear another program on Camera Three about Peter Handke, and we have lunch talking about how SPECIALIZED the knowledge of author's intentions that a critic has must be before a critic can even EVALUATE a "new structure" play with "multiplicity of form," or whatever it is that John says it has which makes it so TOTALLY different from plays or performances in the past: NOTHING is set, EVERYTHING may vary. Work through until 6, typing part and leaving part of the expansion to do when I can't type after 11, but since I CAN'T finish today, it's quite determined, since I'd have to type STEADILY until midnight to finish typing, and I just couldn't do that, I feel free to go over at 5 to watch "Phantom India," and it's one of the best programs of the lot (see next page). Eat at 6 and then John's out to something, and I watch "Airport" after doing the dishes, and it goes on from 7:30 to 10:15, fairly good, and it certainly boosts my technical knowledge of how much a 707 CAN take, which is quite a LOT, and I still don't begin to feel incapacitated with fear about my coming flight to Russia, but mostly because I'm too BUSY to be afraid! Then it occurs to me that Mrs. Johnson might not even be HOME, so I ring her bell and knock on her door, and she doesn't answer, and I assume that her sister upstairs either isn't home ALSO, or won't be THAT disturbed by the noise of my typing, so I begin at 10:20 and KEEP ON GOING until 3:20 in the morning, when I can barely keep my eyes open, but I've typed through page 42, to let me know that I WILL have something over 1500 lines, which is a relief, and I finish expanding the rest of the cards, and so I'll be able to finish the typing and the proofreading and get it to Ruth about NOON tomorrow. It was a battle, but it does feel good to have been able to win it, but sadly it's 50½ hours so far, less than $10 an hour already, and I WON'T have 2000 lines, either. It's a pity, but it's good to get my foot in Harper's door.