1974 4 of 8
DIARY 8596
SATURDAY, MAY 11. Up at 9, exercise feeling weary, and have breakfast. Type 3 pages, and while typing discover that I hadn't enclosed the $50 check with the Scott Meredith manuscript, so I write a check, and go out to mail that, take out the laundry that I should have taken out yesterday, and buy the Village Voice. Back to read the Voice from cover to cover, which really isn't that much, but by then it's time for lunch, showering, and getting the laundry back, then leave for Arnie's at 1:45, getting in at 2:15 to find AGAIN he's had a very slow day. But the sink is pretty full of dishes, which I wash quickly, feeling awkward again when he gets customers that he wants me to handle: I don't want to introduce myself, don't know the names of the toppings on the free samples, and immediately pre-judge whether they'll buy or not, which makes my actions somewhat insincere. When I finish the dishes I decide to go up to Gimbels to buy Mom a present for her latest birthday, particularly since Mother's Day is tomorrow. Get some jewelry and feel a great sense of relief that that's finished: now I just have to pick up a mattress and the stuff from Kei, and then OTHER things from the TO DO list will take priority. He's interested in the double at the Quad, there's talk of seeing the Dramatis Personae "Boys, Boys, Boys," but he finally calls some friends and the arrangement is to see some dirty movies and then have an orgy at 9:30. So there still may be time for me to pick up the Mattachine dance at the Bossert. He wants to take me to dinner, and I suggest the Soerabaya, down on 74th, and it's chilly in the damp breezes outside, and the food's too expensive for too little, my duck bigarade VERY small, his pork rather tough, and the whole thing is $16, for which I leave a $2 tip. Subway to Bill Lannan's just at 9:30, and Bill Wolf and someone else is bound in, and then there're a pair of lovers from a lower floor, and I don't feel like talking, so glance through a very sexy After Dark with Petrus Bosman with a semi-erection, and then GQ astounds me as being JUST about as gay as the first. After much silly talking we have the films and sex (see DIARY 8597), later than I thought, out at 2, home with the Times at 2:30, read it until 3:30, bed exhausted.
DIARY 8598
SUNDAY, MAY 12. Up at 10, the latest yet, when the phone rings for John, which it continued to do through the morning, since there's some kind of dance thing going today. He's over at 12 to get the paper, and he says he hasn't seen ANYTHING about his book in there yet (and nothing about EB III) which is rather sad. I just don't feel like getting down to work, which is about the only thing left to do, so I get out the Times puzzles, the crossword easy, the double crostic rather hard, and work on THAT from 12:30 to 2:30, and then finally decide to have the bacon I've had in the fridge so long, and it's good. Then STILL don't feel like working, so I'm out at 3 to the Promenade to look at the art show, and it gives me VERY negative feelings (see DIARY 8599). It starts clouding up and getting VERY cold at 4, so I'm in to finish reading Dinesen's "Last Tales" at 4:30, eating popcorn along with it, just to give myself a treat. But I'm feeling VERY depressed and not like doing ANYTHING, nap from 4:30-6, and getting into a real THING about where my life and writing are going (see DIARY 8600). Decide that I have to go out this evening to the movies, otherwise everything will be wasted, so I call Arnie, but he's got other plans, so I have dinner at 7 of the last of the Spam, and get out to "Images" and "The Last Detail" at the Quad for the 8:10 showing. "Images" is fabulous---in a class with "Repulsion," both the study of schizophrenia in women, and the constant debate about what's real and what isn't, punctuated by her reading from her own kid's book "In Search of Unicorns" makes it very poignant, and the added fillip of having HER stage name the other female's REAL name, and vice versa, and the three men share each other's names also. Great rich settings, beautiful Scotch countryside, great waterfalls and knife-killings, and PERFECT use of eroticism. Thick-chested leather-jacket blue-jeaned guy sits next, giving me someone to jump with fright against, nice, but he joins his girlfriend afterwards. "The Last Detail" is thoroughly disrespectful of very unpleasant people, the ONLY way to contact them, and the violence and pointlessness are VERY violent and pointless. Out at 12, subway home in a funk-daze, bed at 12:30, hoping it's just FATIGUE that's making me feel so VERY SORRY for myself (see DIARY 8601).
DIARY 8602
MONDAY, MAY 13. Up at 8:30, having actually stayed in bed for 8 hours, and to celebrate I exercise, eat breakfast, water the plants, and type 6 pages of the diary (though why 6 pages should take an hour I don't know), and get down to work on the Cobol book from 10:30 to 1:30, interrupted by John bringing in the mail and by Mrs. Johnson bringing in stamps she bought from the post office (a few) and from a dealer (a lot, at twice face-value and more), costing me $12.80 for about $6.50 worth of stamps. Then have lunch and read a bit in "Landmarks of the Western Heritage," and get back to work at 2:40 and work straight through to the end of Volume 2 at 8:20, having gotten to an average speed of 11.5 pages per hour, really quite good enough, and call Linda and say that I'll be getting the rest of the two volumes to her on Thursday. Arnie calls and says he probably doesn't feel like going to the Club Baths tonight, and I think that's just as well. Stop to eat at 8:30, frying up a good thick steak and listening to the radio for a bit, read more in "Landmarks," and then figure to get more stuff done from the TO DO list, maybe getting down to the point where I'd FINISH the list if I did one per day until the end of May. So I get out the map of the US and put in four sets of markings: a red set of lines for "normal" cross-country touring, a blue set of lines for MY trips; a red set of squares for his summer/ winter ski-tour areas, and a blue set of squares for general high-tourist areas. Get that done about 10:30, and still feel like working, the wine with dinner not really befuddling me too much, and Daisy calls to say she might have a buyer for my ballet tickets! Decide to get to the Mattachine Times article about Curtis Dewees, but get bogged down in dates again, so I get out all the old copies and AGAIN go through trying to find out who was what and when, and find that I'm missing a few dates for the president and a few holders of the New York Area Council Chairman title. Type up a two-page draft of the article, getting most into it, and decide to call him tomorrow and check it with him. By this time it's 12 and I watch Channel 13 about Britannica Three (see DIARY 8603). Finish at 12:30 and bed at 12:50.
DIARY 8604
TUESDAY, MAY 14. Up at 8 and get immediately to the Mattachine Times spread all over the place. Try to get all the information from them that I should have gotten the LAST two times I sifted them, and then call Curtis about 10 to check some things with him, and find that the President and the Area Council Chairman were actually the same person, he'd forgotten about Arthur Maule and Dorrwin Jones, and one I couldn't find was Joe McCarthy, and I thank him and try to put it all together. But, frustratingly, after a few hours I just doesn't GO together, and I call him back (leaving a message) to try to find out when the elections switched from December to May, and how many times HE was in, and he seems to remember that Berube's term was extended for some reason, so Curtis was in only one term, and that'll be the way it's going in. By that time I'm starving, it's about 1:30, and I exercise and have lunch, reading some, and then get back to the Cobol book, working from 3:35 to 6, with a half-hour off when Bob Grossman calls to say he's on a case. It's always nice and quiet during the day, but then loud-foot overhead comes in between 4 and 4:30, immediately turns on the awfulest guitar or female vocal music, and the cats start turning somersaults, so I put in the earplugs and plug through. Daisy called to say that Margo Gil wants one of the tickets, and I'd been through the ballet archives to find that I'm rather interested in seeing the ballet I haven't seen in four years---even before I recall that Bergsma is the one who did the greatest Lilac Fairy I ever remember seeing. So I wash and get out rather early to the theater at 7:45, and she's staring around as if I'd be terribly late. I'd also SMOKED before I went, since I'd had wine with dinner and just felt like smoking, and I felt very much like something was going to HAPPEN, and had NO patience with her talk about various value judgments, though I batted about Plisetskaya and the Harkness (comparing it to brown bananas and overripe peaches, which she happened to like), but Macleary is just DREADFUL, except for one turn that almost came out OK, and I cruise around the floors during the three short intermissions, but really didn't think the BALLET was very good (see DIARY 8605). It's over at 11, I'm home to smoke AGAIN and come with great pleasure over pornography, getting to sleep about 1:15.
DIARY 8606
WEDNESDAY, MAY 15. Up at 7:00, not having to use the alarm for the Hunter class since I woke at 6:30, and ignore the weather report that I HEARD saying that the temperatures were going to get up into the 80's, and wore a black turtleneck that got VERY uncomfortable. Get everything done and get to the subway corner just at 8:15, but Marge and Lorraine don't show up until about 10 minutes later, and then I've left the book under the counter, which when I ran down they returned to me MINUS the pen that was in it. Up to the classes, and the first is a bomb, but the next two are OK (see DIARY 8607), and the intermission in the cafeteria talking about the modern generation is made VERY rewarding by a BEAUTIFUL legged guy in shorts and his muscle-builder friends, the guy in the brown pullover just EDIBLE in his tit-sagging bulk. And there were lots of pulls and tugs on arms and shoulders and necks and backs to eat my heart out, too. Out at 1 and subway to unemployment, wait on the information line to find that I should have been in LAST week, and think that I can get to the bank by 3, but it's 3:30 when I'm out, signed up for the first week (worried about Tom's saying that I DID work last week because I turned in my BILL then, or saying that he HAS work for me), and the rate will be going up to $95 on June (or July) 1! Great! To the bank to find that I CAN draw out $250, which I do, depositing the rest of all the checks, and then get to the STORE to buy groceries, and get home about 4:30, starving, to have bacon again for lunch very late, knowing that I'll save dinner for after the travel class. Finish reading "Landmarks of the Western Heritage" during the wait at unemployment, not really very good, but happy to get still another book finished, and now I'm not NEARLY so pressed to read through the shelf anymore. Fuss around after watching an AWFUL "The Magical Trip through Little Red's Head" (which really didn't SAY anything except "When you have nightmares or are afraid, talk to someone." Great.), and get out at 6:40, fearful of missing the bus when I just miss a D, but get there about 7:30 and ride in to find we only HAVE TWO CLASSES LEFT. Out at 11 (see DIARY 8608 for notes) and drive with Moe to the subway, home for a hamburger for dinner while reading, and get to bed LATE at 2---get the BED tomorrow!
DIARY 8610
THURSDAY, MAY 16. Up at 8 determined to have a good day with the last day of the Cobol for this session, and after breakfast and watering plants, get to work on the book from 9 to 1, stop for lunch and reading the mail that John's been getting into the habit of bringing up, and it's getting HOT outside, too, and I'm getting to the point where I'm feeling like putting in the screens for the windows. But I'm not showering very much anymore, and feel pretty tacky into the bargain. Back to work straight through from 2 to 7 with the last of the copyediting on Volumes 2 and 3, and then check through various figures until 8, but the average is 24 hours for 273 pages, or over 11 pages per hour, and decide to up it 66%, and then increase THAT to 42 hours, and THAT averages out $10.50 per hour, which is just GREAT! Then cook dinner and watch Episode 4 of "War and Peace," and I'd thought it was about 6 episodes, but at the end of 4 Natasha hasn't even gotten to Anatole, so when I talk to Arnie I mention it, and he says he thinks there are about 12 of them, which would take about as long to WATCH as it would to READ THE BOOK! Then, in the heat, decide that I want to---OH, the BED arrives about 1:45, when they said it would be there by noon, and they set it up for me in the bedroom, and then I call Dixie Foam for the mattress to be DELIVERED since I figure that the $6.50 delivery charge will take OVER an hour of my time, not to mention the physical exertion, and why SHOULDN'T I get delivery on it? They think it might be tonight, but it turns out to be tomorrow night. Then decide to start BACK on cross-numbering the pages in the table of contents to the new volumes, and doing it ONLY with the sheets in Volume 0 it goes VERY quickly, so that by the time I'm back to watch TV at 11:30, I feel that I'm about half through. Jan Morris is a GREAT PERSON on a singularly tongue-tied Dick Cavett show, and then I switch to Channel 13, which had postponed the "War and Peace" for a HOCKEY game, and I watch the last HALF of that, which I'd seen before, and it's over at 1:45, and I've gotten VERY tired again, my sinuses blocking and clearing, and I've really GOT to see Azak. Figure to sleep on the sofa the LAST time, and turn the light out at 2.
DIARY 8611
FRIDAY, MAY 17. Up at 8, seemingly having broken the 7 am waking-syndrome, and exercise wearily for the first time in a long time. Back to cross-numbering the diary, getting to the point where the books themselves have to be consulted for the diary pages concerned, and I root out the Dewey Decimal Classification to take care of that discrepancy, and when I finally finish about noon, I am off by just ONE sheet, which means I have, probably, used the SAME diary number for two sheets, and I'm hardly paging through all 9000 pages (which now are NOT in sequential order) to see what page that might be. So I'm off by one, which is almost a percent of 1%. Then have lunch and get out what I hope isn't too late for the session at "Who, What, Where," and get out at Times Square quickly and walk over to 40th and Park lugging the heavy briefcase full of Cobol (nursing the plastic cut I got from slipping the notebook into the briefcase), feeling awkward in my sandals for the first time this year, but with temperatures in the 80's the past few days, the apartment is really getting overly hot, and the streets steam. In for another trial at a gussied-up Twenty Questions (see DIARY 8612), and out at 2:10 and schlep uptown, with some delightfully bare-armed and tight-chested men on the streets, to McGraw-Hill and get to see Linda JUST at 2:30, and we chat on and on until about 3:15, when I get anxious to see "The Thing" on TV, and agitate to go, telling her only briefly at the end about my TV shows. Ed Reilly isn't even looking at the pages to start with, since he AND the author were so impressed by my intelligent questions, and she found only three things wrong: I'd left capitals in some lists, she determined that there should be NO footnotes, and she said everyone should use "must" and "should" less frequently. Not bad at ALL. Subways are VERY hot and announcements about delays resign me to missing the start of "The Thing" and get in at 4:03, during the last of the credits, but I think it crashed BEFORE the credits, so I missed it. Ends at 5:30, I read, have dinner, get the mattress delivered about 8, watch "Bushman of the Kalahari" with dinner, and then Arnie calls to have me go to his place at 9:15 to get to the Club for two, and though I don't feel like it, HE wants to go, so I go, and it's awful (see DIARY 8613), leave at 12:40, I DON'T want to eat, and home to bed at 1.
DIARY 8614
SATURDAY, MAY 18. Fixed the bed last night before crawling into it, sad to find that the mattress cover I'd gotten cleaned was NOT a queen size, so I made do with a smaller one that only had the straps around it, added some things to the shopping list, and woke feeling somewhat stiff from the really VERY firm mattress. But I guess I'll get used to it, as I did to John's finally. Make the bed when I get up at 8, and decide to do some fixing around the apartment. Put music on while I'm moving the speakers around to have the stereo on the horizontal axis across from the sofa for enjoyment by many, if needed, and tried the remote speaker first in the bedroom, but decided I'd never be WORKING in there, and if I wanted music in there for SEX, I'd bring in the STEREO, so I put the remote under the kitchen table with a bit of aluminum foil on top to ward off the splashes from the sink. Got to breakfast after exercising about 10, and was delighted to see that I have a POT plant growing from where I threw the seeds about a week ago. The first is up and I try doing a Caesarian on the second, but it doesn't seem to respond even by Monday, when there's a THIRD sticking up. Move my portrait up, and lower the Tretes batik to cover up ALL the holes in the wall, and decide that I'll eventually put up the old BULL hanging behind the bed, to cover the marks in THAT wall. Get out the slides to see how they work with the mirror, and get so turned on that I come, wanting to leave it out to put into good order, but Mom calls about 2 to say that Helen and Jimmy are on their way to New York and may drop in on me. So I figure it would NOT do to have the slides out, so I put them away, make the beds, fix up the living room, spread out work, and get to typing pages of the surprisingly far-behind diary but I can't get interested in doing much beyond 5. Wash dishes to finish up the last that has to be done, and then I spend a lot of time reading, some of "Seth Speaks," which is rather boring, some more of the yet more boring Wylie "Magic Animal," and then at 8:30 I have dinner while watching the fifth episode of "War and Peace" from 8:30 till 10, then out for the Times to a St. George OVERFLOWING with elegant blacks for a dance, and back to read the whole thing (read the VOICE in about an hour this morning, too) by 12, and start on the puzzles, doing one by 1, and at 1:30 VERY eye-weary to bed, unfinished.
DIARY 8615
SUNDAY, MAY 19. Wake at 8 with the soreness at my third eye more pronounced, and I think of a LOVELY thing to write about how the third eye is invisible because it's in ANOTHER DIMENSION (see DIARY 8616), and it also SEES along that dimension. Finish the puzzle, exercise and eat breakfast, and then water the plants with the fertilizer, keeping to the first and third Sundays. Get to typing but can only get three pages out before I don't feel like doing any more. Watch the "March of Time" summary on Camera Three, and then at 11:30 there's an Intro 2 program with Mal Weiss and Matt Troy for and against, and I learn a GREAT argument: how can the church talk about role-images of GAYS when for years they had role-images of CELIBATES (nuns and priests)? Have lunch, give the paper to John (who yesterday offered me some VERY tough polypores that he and someone ELSE had gone to Pound Ridge to pick, having found no morels), and out at 1 to the BMT, which is having track work done on it, so I get off at Canal and Broadway and walk north to see the Bicycle Club cavalcade wheeling south with their biking banners, and over, again passing GROOVY people on the streets to the Bleecker Street Cinema for "The Most Dangerous Game" (which comes on without titles, has a GREAT shipwreck scene, and is quite a bit more elaborate than the story) and "Blackmail" with a VERY obvious Hitchcock in a bus being batted on the head by a kid, and it seems a very SLOW story, with the girlfriend of a cop being seduced by and killing a young Cyril Ritchard with a bread knife, someone seeing her, blackmailing her, but he has a record, is seen nearby, is chased, and falls through the roof of the British Museum skylight, "releasing" her, but her last laugh is pretty tortured, and she won't survive NOhow. Out at 4:50 and get home by 5:30 to watch "The Advocates" with an effective Frank Kameny saying that "Homosexuals should be permitted to marry" and I even send in my YES vote the next day. Then call Azak for an appointment, Bob Grossman to see the Tantric exhibit tomorrow, and Ricardo to come over, have dinner at 6, and can't figure WHAT to do, just feel TIRED, so I smoke lots and get to BED at 8:30, but then up to look at porno, come VERY stonedly with poppers, eat the rest of the chemically-tasting banana-walnut cake, and SLEEP stonedly at 9:15! Wake at 2:15 for water and to blow my nose, back to sleep to wake again at 6.
DIARY 8619
MONDAY, MAY 20. Then wake again at 6:30 and at 7, thinking of the quadrilogue date that I noted on DIARY 8618, and out of bed at 7:15, feeling quite a bit less tired after 10 straight hours in bed. Exercise and water the plants and eat breakfast, then get down to typing 7 diary pages to catch up to date, and then feel that I have to get to the Shaggy-Dog Story letter, if I'm EVER going to send it in, and type about three pages before Ricardo calls at 1 (though my watch says 2:20, having stopped), saying he can't come over this evening, so I call Bob, who tells me it's 1, and I arrange to meet him at 1:40, which is rough, since I haven't washed and shaved yet, so I do that and get to him at 1:45, though he says nothing about my lateness, only wants to know where I got off the subway and which one it was. Walk around looking for the "Boulevard," but I can't find it, so we end up in Jasper's, downstairs and cool, having veal pizzaiola, without any cheese, only tomato, and lots of rolls and butter, and salad that I think is sandy, but I may have been pulling out pepper flecks only. We talk and listen to nearby conversations, and we decide we want to see the muscle-building exhibit and the Frick and the Carnegie house, and then walk up to the gallery that took the place of Le Drugstore, but then over to China Institute for the Tanka exhibit from Buddhist Tantrism, and it's mostly sculpture, the book isn't worth $5.95, the tankas aren't so good, but there's a BEAUTY of a yab-yum in silver with great expression and delicacy. Out and to the Circle Gallery for lots of serigraphs and woodcuts and lithographs and etchings, for prices from $40 to $4000, and a whole Norman Rockwell wing that Bob detests, though only probably because he's been told to. Then we go shopping for my book by Browne in paperback, window screens (which he buys though I TELL him it will be too small), and clock shopping, but they're too expensive. At 5 there's nothing to do but to go to his place, so we do, to talk about him and Zacharias (see DIARY 8620) and I leave at 6:20 to Azak's to be puzzled about my having BEEN prescribed Librium (though DIARY says I was, too) and I get home at 8 to have Spam dinner, finish "Magic Animal," and type a bit more on the letter, watch TV to 9:30, and get tired to bed at 11.
DIARY 8621
TUESDAY, MAY 21. Up at 7, eight hours sleep again, and find there are a total of FOUR pot plants that have come through, two well enough along to be non-worrisome, one tiny and shriveled that I don't have much hope for, and another that looked pretty good, though tiny, until I pulled one of its puller leaves off it Wednesday morning trying to brush it off, after spraying for the tiny bugs that seem to INFEST it. Typed a bit more on the Shaggy-dog letter, but then it was 9 am and I had to get up to Azak's, after calling to find AGAIN that I got off at the 135th Street station. The hospital scene is quite absurd (see DIARY 8622). Out at 12:15, thoroughly X-rayed and loaded with pills (from last night), and ride the subway home getting LOTS of reading done, have lunch and pick up the ticket for this evening, with binoculars, trying to call Bob, and find that the movie is on ONLY at 2 and 7, so I have to make the 2, so I leave at 1:35 and get there just as it starts, and "The Sorrow and the Pity" is exasperating when the dubbed-in English is the same volume as the "undercurrent" French or German voice, and there's nothing really NEW: I thought EVERYONE knew they were confused and loyal to Petain, then came the resistance, and then the collaborators were punished. Pulling out someone's eyes and sewing live roaches into the sockets reached a new high, however. Intermission from 4 to 4:15, and I call Bob to say he'd have hated it, then sit through until 6:30, when I get out to look for a place for dinner, and settle on a restaurant on 7th just south of 13th, for a GOOD veal parmigiana WITH mozzarella cheese, cheddar on top, lots of tomato and meat sauce over spaghetti, and a salad and rolls, all for $2.69, or $3 with tip. Then subway up to Lincoln Center at 7:30, reading, put book under seat and wash face and stand on balcony watching people searching for seats, and then Lloyd Moore leaves the seat next to me empty! Guy next FINALLY exasperates me into saying "Quiet PLEASE," and there's a long discourse which I hate, but with "La Bayadere" with a grand Sibley and "La Fille" with a good Nureyev and Park the Royal FINALLY hits its stride (see DIARY 8623) and the audience cheers for 20 minutes, nice. Out at 11:25, tired, home at 12:15, have some toast, and get to bed to fall asleep IMMEDIATELY.
DIARY 8624
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22. Up at 7:30, breakfast and water plants but don't exercise until just before dinner. Type 5 pages, always seeming to find more pages to type than not, and my bowel movement is copious and runny, probably for the super tetracycline that Azak's, perhaps unwisely, prescribed for me (I had the urge to say "Why not try the GENTLEST way you can think of that might be effective, rather than building up my somewhat drug-sensitive system with the ROUGHEST dosages?). Then try to finish "Shaggy Dog," but it's 11, and I have a lot of errands to do. Down to unemployment first, where there's still a long line at 11:30, then back to pick up a Shazam comic book, large size, with those sexiest of all superheros, Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Junior (and I found myself SNEEZING a number of times during the day, though I was mainly too warm, rather than too chilly in the high 70E-low 80E weather), checked to find that the GOOD place didn't think a Japanese plug would fit my Uher, that I should get a $20 plug from Grundig. Then to A&S to find, by coincidence, a May White Sale that sells me a queen-size mattress cover for $7, buy an electric clock that later turns out to run VERY loudly, for $5, try another place for a microphone, and it's $10 WITH a remote-control attachment that I don't have the cash for, but when I GET the cash from cashing checks at the bank, I decide I can probably get the SAME thing for about $6 or $7 at the CHEAP place, if the plugs will fit, and resolve to get the Japanese one NEXT week at unemployment. Get food stamps (and I'd gone to Arnie's this morning at 8:30 to return Norma's book, Arnie's last record and the microphone, leaving at 9:05, meeting John on the street, who tells me about Arnie's do at 9 pm Saturday, I read the rest of "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World," just to finish it, then FINISH the "Shaggy-Dog letter," call Bob Grossman to make arrangements for the next day, then wash socks, exercise, have dinner, and get out at 6:30 to the next to the last travel class, studying for the test on the subway, and it's a good class (see DIARY 8625). Home at 11 with the Voice, read it completely until 12, get to bed at 12 without smoking or coming, with Azak's pills in me.
DIARY 8626
THURSDAY, MAY 23. Up at 7:30 and go through the morning routine, typing two pages, and get down to copyediting Cobol at 8:50 to 11:35, when I call Bob to check that this afternoon is still on, and subway up to Gimbel's at 86th and Lexington to meet him for lunch. Jager House is closed for lunch, so we go down 86th and he sees a Belmore-like cafeteria that he wants to go into, and gets a cheeseburger while I see the breast of lamb for only $1.95 and have that with roast potatoes and carrots, not bad at all. It's raining hard enough for me to put on my rain pants, blowing his mind and he squeals in his "I don't BELIEVE it" way as we walk down the street, saying I look like I'm wearing my Dr. Denton pajamas. Up to the Carnegie mansion, and it's clunky from the outside when you really LOOK at it, and it's pretty clunky inside, too. The carved wooden (Scottish oak, hand-carved there) ceilings are spectacular, as are the Indian-carved teak paneling in a few rooms, but the rooms are so MASSIVE and DARK and SQUARE that it's rather depressing, except that the bulky chandelier in the enormous square stairwell is SO in keeping with the dark curves of the wood that it fits. The rooms are done up VERY expensively, and in most cases ludicrously, by different antique firms, and there's the African room, the green sitting room, the white children's room with a $75,000 Sezonac painting, a $290,000 awful Leger in the Moderne Art Deco corner room, and everywhere are Foo Dogs and real artificial flowers and indirect lighting from poles and dinner settings on the TINIEST tables from the most UNCOMFORTABLE chairs. Even the floors and walls have been redone, which has to be REdone by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum when it takes over. Out about 3 and he doesn't want to walk in the park, doesn't want to see the Frick, is having sex with Zach tonight so he doesn't want sex now, doesn't want to shop the book place in the Village, so we part to go home. I get back to work from 4 to 8, finishing chapter 8 in good time (just over 11.5 pages pre hour for just over $11 per hour), have dinner of steak (over half the weight is bone for 694 a pound), peas, and apple sauce, and then an ENTIRELY hedonistic evening to 12 (see DIARY 8627).
DIARY 8628
FRIDAY, MAY 24. Up just before 8, do everything around the apartment but exercise, since I'm trying to get over the diarrhea that I've been suffering since starting to take the super-tetracycline that Azak gave me, and then take an INCREDIBLE amount of time fixing up the apartment (going through the thought that I lived in essentially a ONE-room apartment on 61st, a TWO-room apartment on 70th, a THREE-room apartment on 57th (counting the kitchen, which with the hallways would count as a room, and it DID have a window), and a FOUR-room apartment on Hicks, since the kitchen is now UNDOUBTEDLY a room that gets very messy---and, just as I've thought ALL along, THIS size apartment is really IDEAL, don't need ANY more rooms), and then get down to Cobol at 9:15 to 12:45, finishing up volume 4, so there's just ONE volume left from what I HAVE, and only ONE more pickup! Hungrily get to lunch, taking one of Azak's pills, and THEN decide I really SHOULD get to work on Pat Teller's trip, since she CALLED me this morning to ask how it was coming, mentioning the 90-day savings on reservations. I phone Trip and Travel and STEVE is there, with the ticketing guy, and NOW I know where to find them, and what a COZY group they ARE. Steve berates me that this is my first booking, I blame Stewart, he tells me to call the four tourist offices, but Germany says it'll take three weeks for third-class mail to get here, I suspect the others will be the same, so at 3 I dress and get the addresses and get out to pick them up PERSONALLY! Get stacks from France (little), Germany (HUGE), Netherlands (teeny tiny), Austria (HUGE big), and Belgium (another grand lot). Then it's 4:40 and I subway, loaded down with stuff, up to the Olympia Theater, grab a piece of pizza, and see "American Graffiti" funny, but the BEST was the awards-program-telling police-car back-wheels, and the "Here, catch" of the booze and then the owner SHOOTS at the THIEF! The "Killed" afterwards was rather a ploy for emotion. "The 12 Chairs" is funny and FAST, with rather a letdown that they found them to furnish the city's lounge. Out at 9, home to eat dinner at 10, then listen to music ("Nutcracker," Saint-Saen's Third, "William Tell Overture") until 12, tired enough to bed without coming.
DIARY 8629
SATURDAY, MAY 25. Up at 8, exercise painfully, shower, washing my hair, and then at 9 decide I really want to do something besides work and read, so I move out the bed and fill up a pail with Spic and Span and get to work on the paint-spattered bedroom floor that had been covered up by the storage room furniture until two months ago. Really get into it, tapes playing away, and scrape with razor-scrapper, Brillo, and fingernails, shifting position often so that my legs don't cramp, and I scrub and scrub and scrub around and around, spot after spot, changing tapes when necessary, until it's actually 2:30 (oh, and I'd forgotten to take my pills last night, so I took them this morning). Have lunch of tuna and orange and gingerbread, not one of the best things I've done---and I also did the dishes sometime along in here, too, since there were no more forks, plates, or frying pans left. Disgusted with the amount of time it took, but pleased with the final effect, knowing it's DONE until the room is painted again (hm, next YEAR?), and do some other little things and then get back to Cobol from 4:50 to 7:50, when I just don't FEEL like doing any more, and I've only done 31 pages in 3 hours, which is quite slow. Couldn't figure whether to go to the gay dance last night, but from the loading with the travel information, I didn't feel like going anywhere when I got out of the movie at 9. But tonight John leaves in the car at 8, so I figure he's not going to Arnie's do, and he sometimes DOES have nice ones, so I decide to go THERE, so I shower and shave before 8:30, when I watch the first part of "War and Peace" while eating dinner, and brush my teeth and smoke at 9:15, and get to Arnie's to find there's hardly anyone there yet, so I take a drink and wander in and out of the bedroom, hoping to start something, and Bob Kunikoff says that I really seem to be a turn-on now, having lost weight, or gained weight, or shaved off a beard, but he's being very flattering, and my grass accepts his rambles as great compliments and I say he's being very positive. But he doesn't want to touch me, and when Louis enters, our attentions all turn to HIM (see DIARY 8630). I'm down by 11:30, home to get involved in TWO pipes of grass AND bidis and porno, jerk off SOFT and unpleasantly, and just wipe it off, leave everything sitting there, and fall asleep about 1:30, sick, and exhausted.
DIARY 8631
SUNDAY, MAY 26. Up at 9 to AGAIN realize that I hadn't taken my pill last night, so I take it this morning AGAIN, wondering if the Valium might not be sending my into affectlessness. Get to work on the Times puzzles first thing, stop to watch "Medea in Corinth," a perfectly dreadful one-act opera by Christopher Lees from 10 to 10:30, back to the puzzle, watch more of the "March of Time" from 11 to 11:30, John comes over to borrow the Times, coming into the living room to pick it up, and is seeming VERY friendly for some reason (and that leads me to thinking, see DIARY 8632), but I'm agitated because my dinner dishes from last night are still on the floor, and the glass that I've been hawking up at least a glassful of mucus every day is right there in evidence, and I'm watching TV. How SAD when we don't come TOGETHER. Keep reading through the Times until 1, when "California, Land of No Story" comes on again, with great shots of the cities and the countryside, and there are SURELY lots of pointers to immanent destruction (Browne, Wylie, Cayce, and now this). Have lunch sometime, taking the pills when I think of it (and eating lots of the cheesecake that Arnie gave me last night), and get to Cobol from 3:15 to 6, finishing up chapter 10 at the INCREDIBLE rate of 50 pages in 2-3/4 hours (though at LEAST [EXACTLY] 16 pages were program listings, which lowers it to a more reasonable 12+ pages per hour. Then at 6 watch "Day of the Triffids," not as good as I remember, and the plants looked really STUPID, didn't they? Have pork chop dinner during the end of it, then DETERMINE to look through slides, putting on more tapes, and not using the projector, just sitting in the chair and put them ALL into the same orientation, MANY switched around, THEN decide to label them, and put all the "special" ones back into their sections so I can choose TWO sets of show: one set of INDIVIDUALS that I have more to show of, one set of MIXED people I have only one or TWO of, leaving one set of "file" copies and one set to "come" with. Of course, ALL FOUR sets are organized from "worst" to "best." AND I found the missing Stryker slide, in the camper-trip set of slides. This takes till 12, decide I DO want to come, smoke just a BIT, get VERY hard, use a popper to come feelingly with, DO remember to take the pills, and fall exhausted into bed at 1:30, STILL snuffling up this yellow MUCUS!
DIARY 8633
MONDAY, MAY 27. Wake at 9, surprised to be so late, and quickly water the plants that I forgot to water yesterday. Eat breakfast of eggs and toast for a change, then get five diary pages written, surprised that I got three days behind in only three short days (ha). Then answer the ad for the freelance writing job with overseas travel, and decide to stay with letters, writing to Helen and Jimmy and to Peter, but by then it's time for lunch and I'm worried about finishing up the Cobol today, so I have lunch, reading more of the better-and-better "Seth Material," and get down to Cobol at 2:05, going straight through until 6:05, finishing in good time, with a final page average for today of 13 pages per hour, a total of 20 hours for volumes 4 and 5, upped to 35 hours, or $210 for 252 pages, for a cumulative total of $654 for 671 pages, just OVER the $1 per page mark, and this for TECHNICAL material, so that's PRETTY GOOD, and they should be happy, as I am with my $10.50 per hour! Then shower and wash my hair (which comes out looking better than it has in AGES, a sort of silken cap of lovely evenness), and have dinner of awful Chef Boyardee spaghetti (solid, ugh) and meat sauce (with almost no meat) and peas, and take off to the opera at 7:15. Seat 6 in Box 6 is pretty awful, so I have to stand much of the time if I want to see more than 60% of the stage, but the angles are pretty good so that not MUCH is invisible---surely better for opera than for dance. Actually, this production of "Tales of Hoffman" is one of the worst I've seen (see DIARY 8634). My companion in the box is a woman who keeps saying "Please," so I figure she's German, and she's from Vienna, having come over for a three-day vacation, and all her freunds have left town, and she's staying at the "Royal Manhattan" which she doesn't care for, so I give her a list of hotels (including the Essex House, Plaza, and Pierre) to stay at next time, and a list of museums, including the Frick, Guggenheim and Cloisters. She in turns gives me a couple of museums in Vienna and two hotels to choose from, but she doesn't even begin to volunteer her address, and we chat haltingly about New York. Out at 11:45, reading VERY impressive "Seth Material" until I get home at 12:30, so impressive that I have a DREAM about it (see DIARY 8635).
DIARY 8640
TUESDAY, MAY 28. Up at 8, not exercising, not having breakfast because there's no milk. Type 3 diary pages, then phone Linda to see when I'm to take the volumes of Cobol back and pick up the last two, but she's not in, finally I call her back again at 2, then call Ed, and then when Kei calls John, I talk to her and find she'll be in all day today, so I'm determined to pick up the stuff before she and Mal go away for the summer. Type the "Historically Speaking" (Part Seven) column after calling Mattachine, getting Drew Betterton, who says that Bill West "resigned after he was asked to," and saying there was a letter from Fearn saying that 20M was in doubt. So I then write to Fearn, saying to pass on the at-least $50 check to Mattachine, and asking if he wants "The Gay Guru." Then subway out at 3, reading Seth, to get to Kei's with two bags which I use to put the two things into, then immediately back into the subway and home, thankful that only an hour has taken care of what I SO wanted to do since FEBRUARY 24!! Put the wisteria on the only hook left, and then take down the large painting to put into the bedroom, put others up in the hallway, and put the woven rushes above the hi-fi set, where it looks merely OK, and that finished THAT, and I'm thankful that I'd postponed vacuuming the floor, since there are fragments of grass on the carpet now, and white flakes from the walls where I hammered in picture nails. THEN have dinner, and in the evening decide I really HAVE to get to the Teller itinerary, and it comes out pretty well by 11:30 pm, and then it's time to get to sleep. I've been crossing things like mad off the list, calling Norma and talking to her a long time; thanking her for the book (she's taken today off work) and saying that I'd like to go hiking with her if she's free, and even call Sergio to find that his ticket had NO trouble getting through, and give him Schaffer's message for his biography, and thus am left with only 18 items on the list, but that very list will give me trouble in the next few days until on THURSDAY I decide that it's only because I haven't ADDED to the list that I feel swamped with thing I "have" to do, SO swamped that I don't do ANYTHING for the next few days, MUCH to my disgust, as when I found today that I was 3 days BEHIND. Bed at 12:30.
DIARY 8641
WEDNESDAY, MAY 29. Up at 8, and I'd finally arranged to see McGraw-Hill at 9, so I'm out rather late and get there at 9:15, but they don't seem to be there, so I read until 9:45, when I demand to see someone's boss, or someone, and then the secretary says that Ed Reilly HAS been there, but she hadn't realized that I could have seen him, too. There's nothing new to report, he seems cold, remarking that I've brought bad weather with me again, gives me the last two volumes, accepts the fact that I'll be back with them next week, and I leave for home, getting back about 10:45 with the Voice, which I read straight through right then, finding a film on Bhutan to see tomorrow, and a double feature to see over the weekend. Don't feel like doing ANYTHING, yet I'm pressured with things TO do: the Cobol book, more writing, reading. Call Pat Teller and she says the itinerary looks pretty good, so I decide to get to Trip and Travel this afternoon. Subway down at 3:45, getting there about 4:45 after a long walk, and Fran says some interesting things (see DIARY 8642). Then Steve comes in, tries some hard selling, says my itinerary looks good, and she says she'll work on it, sitting around until Steve drives back at 6:45 to pick me up for class. I try to get him to talk about the shop he wants Walt and me to go into, but we pick up Linda Marshall and keep talking about having sex with her on a sponge, so talk gets nowhere. The class is chaotic (see DIARY 8643), with John Cappello talking for about 10 minutes, totally confusing everyone, and then Steve asks if anyone has any questions, dismissed the class at about 8:45, and then the three from the other agency come in, take the test, then Moses comes in and talks, and Steve tries to get everyone to tell him what they're going to be doing (for him, probably) in the travel business, and I tell Walt that Steve keeps talking of the two of us together, and what does HE think of that, I finally tell Steve that "I have three big writing interests: satire, science fiction, and gay liberation, and I'm about to make a breakthrough in all three fields," and he doesn't blink, probably not having been listening. Talk a long while with Walt (see DIARY 8644), onto the subway at 10:50 to get home JUST at 11:30 for toasted peanut butter sandwiches for dinner and watch an hour of "That's Entertainment" and an interspersed 1/2 hour of commercials. TIRED to bed at 1:15.
DIARY 8645
THURSDAY, MAY 30. Wake at 8:30, still tired after 72 hours sleep, so something's wrong: I'm probably getting a cold to complicate my sinus problems that aren't being solved with the tetracycline and Librium and vitamin C. Hard, so I decide to try to come by FUCKING, so I start rubbing my cock against the sheet, then Baby Magic my hand and use a towel, but finally just plain jerk off, and John surprises me by buzzing and bringing in my mail, and it's 10:30 already! Sadly, it's "Anecdotes of Destiny" and I start reading it, have breakfast at 11, keeping reading it, have lunch at 2, and FINISH the whole book by about 3, feeling disgusted with myself, but there it is. Marty calls to invite me to his last music class tomorrow night, Data Communications calls offering me a job for $11 or $12 an hour in Boston for four months (which I'll turn down, but send them a resume anyway), and George Allen from Latham calls again, and we make an agreement that I'll see him at 1:30 on Tuesday to start somewhere in the range of $8 to $10 an hour as essentially a CONSULTANT on this text that they're writing! Want to get to the Cobol book, but I don't FEEL like it, and I DO want to see the Bhutan film, so I try calling Bob Grossman, get his cleaning lady, try calling Pat Teller, but she's busy, so she'll call back, and I hang by my teeth, typing only one diary page which tells how AWFUL I feel at that point`, and I really can't DECIDE what to do, but THEN it dawns on me that I should make a new list and put EVERYTHING on it, so I'm not PRESSURED by it, but I haven't even caught up on the DIARY yet. Anyway, decide I MUST vacuum the floors, so I do THAT, listening to music, until 5:15, when I leave, getting to Asia House just before 6, and there's a good crowd, and the movie is quite interesting (see DIARY 8646). Out at 7, home at 7:45 to do not much of anything until 8:30, when I watch "War and Peace" until 9:30, and then decide I DON'T want to work, and get to the slides, sorting them into singles, representatives of sets, and very good ones, and that lasts until 1 am, when I smoke, feeling rather silly about it, and come AGAIN, getting VERY tired into bed at 1:50, feeling sorry for myself for not having done anything USEFUL today (though at any OTHER time, reading Dinesen, seeing "Bhutan" and TV, and doing slides would have been an ENORMOUSLY SATISFYING DAY. Something's WRONG!).
DIARY 8647
FRIDAY, MAY 31. Up at 9:45, feeling stupid from smoking and coming; have breakfast, don't remember if I water the plants or not, and John brings me the mail which is again a bunch of nothing, nothing from ANY of the writing (except from Elaine). Sit on the sofa in a daze, not knowing what to do, and pick up the Voice three or four times to read another article in it, just to be doing SOMETHING. Finish labeling the slides for a couple of hours in the earlier part of the day, making up a map of where things are, relabeling and re-put slides into various boxes, and finally feels that I have a workable system, but it's taken about 8 hours to do it, and I feel silly for concentrating on that when I have so much ELSE to do. Again, I fully realize it's because I haven't made up a new DO list, but I don't manage to get down to doing THAT today. Have lunch about 1, reading New York for a change, and then do the dishes and scrub the paint spots off the stove top, something that's been preying on my mind, and I don't want to have to put THAT on the new list. Then get down to catching up on the diary, appalled to find that I'm three days behind, but catch up with that with seven pages, but don't even have time to clean off my desk before I have to shower and wash my hair and shave and clean my teeth and call Avi to arrange for the movie this evening, and plan out a whole lengthy evening out. Leave at 5:15 for Marty's, worried about being late while the subway sits below 34th Street for about 10 minutes while the car gets hotter and hotter, and get to his place at 6 to find myself about the fourth one there, so he shows me his new, spacious co-op with Regina in residence (with her mother there, too), and then the class straggles in, Mike tells me to get a Fujica 801 for a first camera, and the class is just like listening to Marty himself on an evening. Call Avi at 7:30, and he rightly excuses us from the invitation to stay to dinner. I get to his place at 7:45, he's been on the phone with his mother and hasn't fed Joe's cat yet, so I glance through Playgirl and we're out at 8:05, down to eat a VERY mediocre dinner in Brigitte's for $5.35 with tip, to much for mediocrity, and to Greenwich to see nicely startling "Don't Look Now" and VERY much fun "Three Musketeers." Out at 12:45 and meet David Gleaton, chat, stop at an AWFUL Aladdin's Cave, walk and talk (see DIARY 8648), and home at 2, exhausted to bed, nose STILL dripping awfully.
DIARY 8650
SATURDAY, JUNE 1. Wake at 10:15, chagrined because I wanted to sleep just a short amount of time as recommended by "Seth Speaks," and I didn't feel particularly rested. Through the morning routine excepting exercising until about 11, John brings up the mail which is only a battered copy of Travel Agent, and I clean off the desk, putting things into nice piles, writing a check to Azak for my November gamma globulin shot, and typing three pages of the diary that allows me to tear off the May sheet of the calendar, coming to June, hardly looking like it outside, since it's barely been sunny all week, just a dismal continuation of the rain and cloudiness of the long Memorial Day weekend last weekend. (And it goes into the third week, since this morning as I put the blind up at 10:15, it just begins to rain outside.) Make out a new DO list, and I more than exceed the 17 items that I'd reduced it to, giving me some idea of what I HAD been keeping in my head. It felt better than an overdue douche. Then it's 12:20 and I don't feel like eating yet, so I put out the tuna to warm and call Bob Grossman to see what he's doing and to chat about the movies last night, and he says he's had a fight with Zach. I try to get to what he wants, but he won't go, and I suggest the I Ching, so I talk him through it until 2, and I come out with hexagram 14 which he interprets as YES, he should continue the relationship with Zach, and even I got a shiver when it said to avoid the "evil influence" (me, trying ever go gently to talk him out of Zach) and go toward "the perfect one" (who he adjudges Zach to be), and it DOES sound as if I can wave goodbye to Bob Grossman. At least he asked me over next week to have another question for the both of us. Then have lunch at 2, and get down determinedly to Cobol at 2:30, going through to 7:30, having to put in the earplugs for the woman walking and playing records upstairs and the guy "singing" downstairs. Real drag, however, and I'm delighted to leave for Channel 13 from 7:30 and the "Mystery of the Anasazi" who occupied the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, the 8:30 part 7 of "War and Peace" with good effects of Moscow burning in the distance, the 10 look at the automobile "The Chrome-Plated Nightmare," and the 11 look at "The Glosterman." Out at 11:30 to stroll on the straight-crowded Promenade, buy the Times, read it all, then do the PUZZLE to 2:40! Bed QUITE disgusted with myself, and have trouble getting to sleep even THAT late!
DIARY 8651
SUNDAY, JUNE 2. Wake at 10, feeling awful getting up even THAT early, and get right to the book from 10:20-1:15, stop for lunch and finishing up the Times, then work from 3 to 7:15, type one page, have dinner, and ONE of these nights, and it's probably tonight, that I decide to put the Pendaflex folders into the file cabinet. Start by putting all the Teller itinerary information into five folders for their respective countries, leaving one on the shelf for when I FINALLY get in touch with her. Then put the travel drawer totally into Pendaflex, and it turns out that the drawer is STUFFED to the LIMIT already, and I haven't even put in the stuff from the TRAVEL CLASSES, which is what I REALLY wanted the drawer FOR. So ALREADY I have something like two drawers full of travel stuff, particularly if I start putting my PERSONAL souvenirs into it for reference. Then I get to the "Letters" drawer, and decide to do it by rote, just going one after the other after the other, but there are about 60 of them, and they use up the majority of the Pendaflexes, and there really aren't THAT many that are common, and surely MORE than half of them could be lumped into some sort of categorized category-scheme of "Inactive" and filed in a far SMALLER space. One of the things about Pendaflex-usage is that much space is taken up by the FILES themselves. Have only a few left, and I start getting into the scrapbook drawer, since the Mattachine drawer is empty enough to stand on its own (this will probably receive the overflow from the Travel drawer and THEN what, start looking for another filing cabinet??). Actually, there IS room for another one, and I just MIGHT go down to West 20th Street and SHOP for another one day. But surprisingly many of the scrapbook files get put away, and then I'm out of folder racks and I'm out of folders, and I can put it away with the idea that I'll want to cut DOWN on the number in the letter's drawer and build UP in other places. So much for THAT. I'm playing music on tape all this while, while those above and below me join in on THEIR systems, and then I put in earplugs and work on ANOTHER Cobol chapter from 10:25 to 12:10, decide to smoke to sleep, but start coming up, get lathered up and come SOFT again with Baby Magic. Bed at 1:30!
DIARY 8652
MONDAY, JUNE 3. Up at 9:30, feeling pretty awful, but I manage to exercise and shower and eat breakfast by about 10:30, try calling Pat Teller but they say she's (and the whole OFFICE) moving TOMORROW, so she's too busy to talk. I work on the Cobol book from 11-11:15, talk to Bob for the plans for the day, try calling Steve, call Walt and talk to him for a LONG time about his plans for the summer, for business (and he begins to sound less and less like what would make a good partner, not the least of which is he probably couldn't at ALL dig up $5000 for an IATA bank deposit, and wouldn't spend more than 10 hours a week at the office). Call Linda and she talks a lot about how awful it would be if it were Complete Travel on Sheepshead Bay Boulevard, but then Walt reminds me that Steve said it was on Avenue U, but he's not home to be verified. Try calling Azak but he's not home, and John suggests that we go to the LaRues for the weekend, so THAT sounds nice for a change! Then back to the book from 1:15 to 2:30, calling Bob just five minutes late to say I'll be there about 4, take off, reading the increasingly interesting "Seth Speaks" on the subway, and get to his place to show him the LI Railroad tour book and take him the portable typewriter so he can send out some job letters. Then we get to the I Ching and I start and it says to STAY STILL and CONSOLIDATE, and his says to WAIT FOLLOWED by SUCCESS, and FRIENDS will help him, so he says he figures he should get a job until a friend offers him a business, and I feel that Steve and I would run into conflicts, so it really AGREES. Then I ask if any of my stuff OUT is going to succeed, and it starts being VERY confusing, and I don't get ANYTHING out of it. I keep trying to toss Bob into bed, but he keeps saying no, getting annoyed when I ask "What happens when you're attacked?" and reach for his shirt. He suggests eating at Country Cousin, which is nice, but it's starting to rain, so he's back for umbrella, we bus up for GREAT shared barbecued ribs and chicken and BEAUTIFUL waiters and so-so crowd, down to walk across the bridge to the river at 71st, down to 63rd, down Sutton, ogling the townhouses, and leave him at 11:15 after seeing the premiere issue of Dilettante, modeled after After Dark, and home at 12 to decide to come AGAIN, this time getting ALL hot with bidis and poppers and coming FINE!
DIARY 8653
TUESDAY, JUNE 4. Madness last night until 2, but I wanted to DO it, and I DID. Up at 8, tired, and finish the Cobol book from 8 to 10:45, when I had arranged to see them at 11:30. So I wash my face and teeth and shave, and say I'll be a bit late, getting in at 11:45, getting OUT, free of the book, at 12:15, having said I'll do the Teacher's Guide AND the index! Should have called Latham then, but walk down to Madison and 42nd and up to the tiny office to find everyone at lunch, so I'm down to Zum-Zum for a highly SMALL roast beef sandwich, good beer, but for $2.10 it's a bit much. Back up at 1, and George Allen's there to receive me, saying it's good because he has a 2 pm appointment, and he has three things I COULD do: write instructions for rewriting the geology chapters; set up outlines for the Atomic Physics and Chemistry chapters; and help him outline and place the interludes. We get into some GREAT stuff: Chardin and Whitehead and Zardoz and Seth and Omega Man and Stapledon for future evolution, but he gives me the first task, saying it will be for $7 an hour, should take between 15 and 20 hours, and wants it back on Monday. I figure the weekend is shot, so I say Tuesday, and he says that leaves only 2 weeks for the rewrite, but that's OK. He seems nice and trusting and it should go OK---he has the WORST handwriting in the world. Stop in to chat with Rodelinde Albrecht, but she ends coldly for some reason, and down at 2 to get back with a load of stuff at 2:30, including a gallon of red wine that I remembered to pick up. Get a pocket full of money and a shopping list and go out to buy 10 pounds of potting soil and two biggish POTS for the POT, forget Sensodyne, and then get to a great load of groceries that severely taxes my arms coming back home. Put everything away, trying to decide what to do, and get out the Times article on North Cape, my postcards, references, and write a nasty letter to Lee Foster. THAT feels good! Then have dinner at 7, call Paul Bosten for a threesome on Friday, and decide to sift through PORNOGRAPHIC PICTURES, starting about 8, going through until 12, sorting EVERYTHING, and smoke and have a GREAT come with poppers, exciting about having sex with Paul on Friday, and VERY stoned listen to music and take the EXTRAORDINARY notes on DIARY 8654 and very many pages afterward. Bed at 2, totally BOMBED out of my skull!
DIARY 8661
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5. Wakened at 7 am with pigeons COOING and BEATING on the fire escape, and look out to see them clustered around a FEEDER on the fire escape above, so I put on my bathrobe and ring her BILL, saying that I was awakened (and she said SHE didn't like to be wakened) and she said she'd stop feeding the pigeons. GOD! Then she was home all day, tromping around on my roof, so it was a good thing that when I checked to see what times the "Poseidon Adventure" was on at the Cinema Heights, it wasn't on, so we had to go to the Loew's 83rd to see it (though I checked and there was a double feature at the Lyric!). Transplant the pot early and do some other things around the apartment, and then get out to unemployment at 11:40, absolutely the latest, since they closed the line at 11:55, and then again tried to get the microphone wired, and this time they say I have to get a "pin-plug adapter" for my microphone, but they say I should really try the regular Uher microphone, though they insist that THAT is $84! Then I pick up an egg beater and toothpaste and bacon and raisins that I had on my list to get, and get home feeling pretty good at 1, have lunch, then call a few Uher places to get more runaround (so HAPPY to have the new directories for Manhattan around now), and then leave at 1:30 to meet Bob in Central Park at 2:15, and take off my clothes and look at two muscled DOLLS across the way, and some other nice people, too, but Bob's feeling hot about 4, so we wander around the park, stop in at Burger King for a snack, and I find their hot apple pie is awful UNLESS dipped into their vanilla shake, and we get to "Poseidon Adventure" at 5, though it doesn't start until 5:10, and then at the START they say there were "a few survivors" so we KNOW they got through. And the capsizing is RATHER unexciting because it happens so GRADUALLY, the pretty boy is killed immediately, and you never really get the claustrophobic FEELING of being trapped inside the ship. And the coincidence of getting out so EASILY was too pat. Then eat at Hunan Taste, good for $4.50, and home at 9 to type seven pages, getting all of last night's notes down, at 11, and then shower and crawl into bed at 12, with earplugs in because the stupid woman upstairs is playing her record player.
DIARY 8662
THURSDAY, JUNE 6. Up at 8 and fix up the apartment and mess around with odds and ends until 9:35, when I settle down with Latham, reading the sample chapter on "Solids, Liquids, and Gases," and DON'T LIKE IT: history and popularization and oversimplification and over-formulization totally intermixed. VERY uncomfortable to read and think about immersing myself into. Urge to GET OUT. From 10 to 11 I read the chapter and comments, and it's very complicated because they're following EVERYBODY. At 11 I skim Krauskopf, and it's overly naming, too detailed and dry, and then I skim the "Restless Earth." Then I can't take it and start telephoning: Azak and Steve and Fran and Gordon and Teller and Kevin and George Allen: Azak: OK healthwise, not even full sinuses; Steve was "teasing" about the agency; Gordon makes appointment for Monday, Kevin calls back later and urges me to type DIARY 8659-8660, George Allen calls and says that I can bring that stuff back because HE thought of calling me yesterday, I charge him 5 hours, he chalks it up to his poor decision and I arrange to pick up NEW stuff after Razz'm'Tazz. Out at 1:45 and get to East 40th with a GREAT group (see DIARY 8663), leave at 3:25 for Latham, and we chat for an hour about Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Atomic and Nuclear Physics; he agrees I can leave out names and outline it my OWN way: the writer has been teaching it for years IN a community college! FINE. Home at 5:15 and put things away and start telephoning again: John Casarino wants to have a group; John Connolly will call back about Canasta, Alice Duskey and I chat, she might proofread Cobol for Linda Schaffner; Marge Dumond's Lorraine answers, she's leaving for a camper across US, I tell her lots of places to go; Fred Courtney's broken with Tracy, going to leave the US, would like a group sometime; Elkins and Worthy moving to FLORIDA; Rolf doesn't answer, Pope Hill will charge me $35 for a year's projection and think about my being his travel agent; John Pascarella isn't at that number; Jeff is sad because his grandfather's just had a massive heart attack, and Walter doesn't answer. Type 3 pages, eat, wash dishes, bed at 11, smoke, decide to come with clipped pictures, then up to eat and listen to records, and get to bed at 1:45 as is usual---coming VERY hard with Baby Magic and RUBBING! Stoned with grass and bidis and popper and lots of porno and lots of cock-grappling.
DIARY 8664
FRIDAY, JUNE 7. Leap out of bed as the phone rings for John at 10, and then I'm still getting ready to exercise after the mail comes up at 10:30, and I've watered the plants and eaten breakfast after THAT at about 11:20, bake butter cookies and forget them, making 25-minute cookies 40-minutes crisp, making the whole day run VERY late. Type two diary pages about noon after putting the dishes away and then can get down to business. But since John says there should be work to take along for the weekend, I decide to do everything there, so the next thing I can work on is the retyping of Elaine's stuff, and I find a neat poem of hers on the back of one of the submissions, so I do the longest thing twice, just for her. Then I get down to rewriting my regular resume for Data Communications Services, and get out the travel resume that I'd done so long ago as the basis for the phony one for Lana Lasanti to be a tour guide as Arnie's going right now in the Greek Islands (in fact, I guess he's due back today). By this time I find it's 6, and I've phoned Pat Teller and found that she's switching things TO August 30 and will decide finally on Sunday. Then talk to Bob Grossman, who was out all day buying a sofa, who says he's flying to Chicago to see his family on Tuesday, and I make arrangements with him for me to buy his ticket, and call Trip and Travel to talk to Uncle Frank, who believes I'm who I say I am, and says that I can just send a check to them on Monday when I find out that he really wants to go: no need to send it in TODAY. So that's fine. Then shower and fix up the apartment for Paul, taking off the electric blanket but putting the cord under the mattress which I switch around so the spots from my nose will be at the foot of the bed, and adding the Indian spread. Also tack the silk shawl to the door, and the decoration of the bedroom looks pretty complete as far as I'm concerned. Eating dinner quickly at 7:40, drinking lots of wine to get a nice buzz on, and Paul isn't on time, so I fuss around with last things until 8:20, almost getting to doing something else, packing for tomorrow's trip, and then he buzzes the bell, we talk about lots of things, and then get down to have fairly reasonable sex (see DIARY 8665). End up watching TV until 12, and then he leaves, and I immediately crawl into bed and have NO trouble falling wearily to sleep.
DIARY 8666
SATURDAY, JUNE 8. Wake about 7:30, happy that I packed the night before, don't have to shave since I'd shaved about 7 pm, pack the rest of the stuff, have breakfast, shower and brush my teeth, and I can hear John in the hall at 8:58, and I poke out and say "You always WERE two minutes fast," and we get down to the car for the ride up to Darien. I talk about lots of people we know, bringing him up to date, so the trip goes fast. There about 10:30 to get out to search for mushrooms, and find whole boxes full of clitoscopies, or whatever, and he's delighted, so we're back to the house (after a run-in with a dour-faced matron who says she's owned the ground for a long time and Jan says with a little-boy moue that she probably hasn't) to have some of his white wine and mushrooms, and have lunch out on the lawn just as the sun comes out vaguely, and it's quite beautiful there, and the lunch of a hearty pea soup, red wine, mushrooms, and a cucumber-tomato salad is very good, but the three bottles of wine for four people makes everyone tired, so I figure to take a nap, getting to bed at 3 and getting up at 5. Down to chat with everyone for awhile about various things, then out to the porch to work in the yellow-green light over the far shore on the outline from 5:30 to 8, when they call me in for the mushrooms before dinner, and then we eat from about 9 to 11, again with lots of wine, and we talk about my getting into the travel business, the fact that John should stop being so rigid about what kinds of jobs he wants to get, the idea for school music for the bicentennial, a bit about my outline, more about India and Nepal, things about NYU and publishing and books and festschrifts and students and faculty and problems and finances and rich and poor and Watergate, even to John's telling one about Nixon being circumcised and the operator saying it was rough because there was just no END to that prick. Look at some of their new Japanese prints, some very good, find glass in John's walnut cake with all the cream, find some of the steak that isn't underdone, and the pork is great, potatoes are poor, and the cake a triumph DESPITE the glass. I can't get to sleep, tossing and snuffling, but finally doze off about 1, I guess.
DIARY 8667
SUNDAY, JUNE 9. Wake almost at the tick of 6, quite bright in the room despite the fact that I pulled the blinds after John was in bed for the night. Downstairs silently with my books and sit and make the first part of the outline from 6:30 to 8:30, feeling very good about how it's going, and they're down at 8, and at 8:30 I have cereal and we glance through the Times, I add some muffins with butter and jelly, then get back to work inside, since they say it's getting humid outside, from 9:30 to 1:30, and I finish with the outlining of the first part. We have lunch out on the porch this time, bulgur that John brought and a salad and hot rolls and butter, all very good, and iced tea for a beverage, which I say is good because I'd decided I really couldn't have any more wine before dinner today, since I had to work. But then the sun is SO bright that I decide to lay in the sun, they don't mind my sunbathing in underwear ("We do it all the time."), so Jan cuts the grass so I won't bear down on it, and I lay out at 1:50 until 3:20, when the sun has just about covered the little area, and I'm feeling quite hot and drippy, VERY humid, and reading Seth along with it. Up to the spare bathroom to exercise as well as I can in the limited floor area with limited noise, and then shower, washing my hair, and then they're into the mushrooms again. I give them all "Tell-Manhattan" to read, and they think it's good, Jan even suggests sending it to Science magazine, saying they print things like that on occasion. I'll try. Then out with the wine and mushrooms, chatter on about all KINDS of things, getting a list of places to stay OUTSIDE main tourist places, and then the pork chops are cooking and we eat outside AGAIN in the cooling breezes, with pork and Coke, talking about grass and hash with them for the first time, they saying they'd grown it, tried it with no effect, knew the girls took it on occasion. Then John is ready to leave after a long talk about Mozart, and I get my stuff together and we're off about 7:15, getting back through roads that I call "always a great adventure" about 8:45, and I mess around doing things until I get back to work from 10-12, typing some, bought the Times, too, and got to bed, coming VERY nicely, at 1:30 after eating cookies and an orange against the heat.
DIARY 8668
MONDAY, JUNE 10. Wake at 7, with exactly three hours of retyping and lots of fun things to do with the outline, and last night, stoned, I'd REALLY come up with some wild ideas, but when I took it in, he said that they might be good for an Interlude. Called Bob last night so I could call Fran this morning right at 10 with the information about his flight, and called him, too, and then Arnie called with an offer of a student discount for "That's Entertainment" which I leaped at, and a busy day started. Out at 10:35, getting to Harold Gordon's JUST at 11, and wait around a few minutes before he sees me, and the idea is to talk to CLUBS, which I hadn't totally understood, and I don't know WHEN I'm going to get around to it. Out at 11:55, CALLING George to find that he has lunch in, so I stop in a Chock Full O' Nuts for lunch, having a rather good ham and egg and tomato sandwich for $135 (BUT THAT'S ABSURD!) and milk and peach cream pie for just over $2.25 (that should be a MEAL!), and up to Latham at 1. He likes the stuff I've done, I spend lots of time at the xerox machine xeroxing 31 pages of the six sheets to send to Elaine, and some of my resume and some of the Scientific American article that described the "structure" of the neutron and proton. He said that the authoress will be in on Wednesday at 10:30, and I stupidly forgot about unemployment and said it would be OK. Finish with him at 3, and start at a desk there working on the next assignment: writing articles on momentum and gravity, and work to 4, when I walk up (in BLAZING heat) with a full briefcase to the Ziegfeld, seeing a LUXE white Continental with bar unfolded drive up to the Hilton, and meet him, and DO get in for $1. He's brought me stamps and coins and things from Turkey, and then suggests we go to the baths tonight. I'd called Fran for the MCO number for insurance from Trip and Travel, then I called Bob and gave it to him and he said he was "tired" but told ARNIE that he'd been to the Continental that afternoon! Have a good trip there! So Arnie goes off to his Sex Information conference (after a very mediocre "That's Entertainment," delayed half an hour by a guy having a heart attack), I'm home to eat, and when Arnie calls he WANTS to go, so I brush and shave and smoke and go at 10:05, leaving at 1:15, and it wasn't really THAT bad an evening (see DIARY 8669)---it COULDN'T be worse than BEFORE!.
DIARY 8670
TUESDAY, JUNE 11. Wake at 7:45 to the sound of the birds clawing refuse down on my window again, and up at 8:15 to find a note slipped under my door from Judy, saying she hoped it didn't bother me. With my desk piled HIGH with all sorts of junk from yesterday, I can't decide what to do first and fall into a fantastic state of depression (see DIARY 8671). Decide to finish the Times first, so I get through that, finish the articles I wanted to read in the Magazine, and then look at the double crostic. It's so difficult (don't know ANY of the words right off) that I immediately tear it into pieces and throw it down the toilet. ONE temptation gone. The crossword is easy, and when I finish about 11:30 I don't know what else to do, so I get hard and jerk off, feeling terribly stupid. Still engrossed in the depression, I can't even begin to sort things out on my desk, so I exercise and have lunch about 12:30. Still agonizing, I lay on the sofa and just THINK, thinking that AT LEAST I should get up and type a few pages to get me out of this mood, but finally I seem to break through the bottom and get off the sofa and get to the desk to sort through Elaine's stuff, and at about 1:30 the day finally begins. Make up a large package to Elaine with a letter inside, write the greatly overdue check to Trip N Travel, pay the two-month's Con Ed bill, send off for the Armenian dance performance, send four checks off to Washington for my balance-health, look through the ASI stuff that came in yesterday and send dues to Fred Pattison and a request for a register of indexers from Marlene Hurst, finally send a letter and resume to Data Communications Services, and answer the form letter from Specialized Writing Services for a "meeting" that John brought up this morning, after glancing through the New York and Travel Agent that he ALSO brought up. Put the depressing Meredith response away, too, and write the letter to Troy, Michigan with OIs and Tell-M, waiting to get the xeroxes of it tomorrow when I go early to unemployment and late to Latham. Ten things in all. Respond to Judy's penciled note at LENGTH, saying that I'll be sunning on the roof, and slip it under her door. Then type four diary pages, have dinner, mope again until I decide to do LITTLE things, so I group some of the letter files, reorder the travel drawer to make more room, file the travel class stuff, reorganize the shelves, sew a cloth screen to stop flies coming through open French door, and get to bed at 12, fairly out of the depression at last.
DIARY 8673
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12. Wake at 6:15, doze till 7:15, when the woman upstairs starts flopping around. Sit on the sofa in total disgust until I rouse myself, exercise, eat breakfast, type three pages, and get out at 9:15 to unemployment (who says nothing about me being there an hour early), having stopped at the post office and paid 744 to send the pages to Elaine even THIRD class, then subway to Latham early at 10:15, tell him my idea bout the pencil-drop as an introduction to scientific method, and he says that's a possibility for part of chapter 1. Alice MacNou comes in and seems young and experienced, like me, and we might work well together. She skims over the "extra" material with a slight smile on her face and says nothing, I'd picked up honey from a bank promo beforehand, bought a copy of "Galaxy" magazine to send "Tell-M" to, and see Lou Ferrigno on the cover of Muscle, and bought one of those, too. Out at 12, getting all the deadlines coalesced to Tuesday, better, and get home at 12:30 to have lunch and remember that I wanted to see the double at the Carnegie Hall Cinema. Call for schedule, talk to Susan, call Fred Pattison who encourages me to come to WSDG tonight to talk about the travel plans, and try to call Steve Goodman, but there's no answer. Then pack the shoulder bag for the evening and get out at 3:50 to get a bit late to "The Decameron" by Pasolini, and he likes boys surely better than girls, and there are LOTS of pretty faces and bodies and even a few nice cocks and some funny stories. "Medea" is even worse: "Suddenly, Last Summer" crashy music, kabuki dubbing, pretty boys, lots of blood and ritual slaughter, incredible Cappadocian landscapes, and a wide-eyed Maria Callas who looks rather like Regina, Marty's current girl. Possibilities of cruising in the dark back, but the constantly opening and shutting door is a bore. Out at 8:10, wash my face, subway down to meet Fred Pattison coming off a bus, good, because I'd forgotten to bring the ADDRESS, and it's SOUTH of 14th Street. Meeting is awful as usual (see DIARY 8674), but I'm out at 11, home at 11:30, have two eggs and pretzels because I have no bread, jerk off nicely with grass and bidi-end and poppers and porno from 12 to 1, and sleep soundly till 7:15.
DIARY 8675
THURSDAY, JUNE 13. Drag myself through the exercises, breakfast, and watering the plants, type two diary pages, then get down to correspondence, writing Mom, Paul, Henry, Helen, and Galaxy for today, and Rita's letter to send out tomorrow, since hers came so late in the list. Fear that Paul's letter won't get there before he leaves, but I DID have to be late. Then work for a long time on the resume and letter to Steve Goodman's approval for the job with some travel company, tried to call him and finally left word at his office, getting his number there from Fran, and then Alice Duskey calls and says that Betsy Feist gave her a job at Crebos on my word alone. Took the time between 12:40 and 2:15 on the roof (third time out, moving from the multi-turn times in CP with Bob Grossman that didn't do a thing from 2:15 to 4 on June 5, to the 10-10-15-15-20-20 regularity at Jan's from 1:30 to 3 (getting closer to midday) on June 9, to a 20-20-25-25 right-at-midday stint today that left me pinker than ever). Back to shower and watch a makeup of "War and Peace" from 2:30 to 4, rather slow, what with Andrei dying and Pierre chatting with Platon and Nikolai falling in love with Maria---so there's only one left to watch. Feel good about getting things done from the list, but OTHER things are starting to pile up: like getting groceries and washing pullovers and vacuuming and washing dishes. Then start a letter to Jan Morris, but by that time Paul's called to make an arrangement for Saturday's threesome and maybe Sunday's sunning, and it's time to shave and eat dinner and get out at 7:15 to the opera, and "Bluebeard's Castle" and "Gianni Schicchi" make an odd couple (see DIARY 8676), but it's over at 10:30 with little applause, so I'm home by 11, and make popcorn and settle down to finish the last 40 pages of "Seth Speaks," and reluctantly put it away: like Krishnamurti and Browne, I DO feel that I'm putting away ANSWERS and overlaying that good information with just READING material. Then it's 12:30 and I brush my teeth and get into bed with the earplugs: I've been feeling sort of tired, going to bed too late and getting up too early, so I don't want to be wakened by birds, but I DO glance at the clock at 6:10 am, but am awake finally at 8, a good sleep.
DIARY 8677
FRIDAY, JUNE 14. Up at 8 and go through the morning routine, pushing hard to get to 27 continuous pushups, but there they are, and I can see the development in the pectorals and shoulders already. Finish the letter in the typewriter to Jan Morris and then write a long two-page thing to Jane Roberts, taking things from the book and from other references, type two diary pages to keep deliciously up to date, and then turn the direction of the day by calling Azak and asking him to send me a prescription, but he says he'll GIVE me the medicine, but I have to come to his apartment at 6. So I immediately figure I'll do that in combination with calling on some of the publishing companies with the Africa Safari, and so after lunch at 1 I settle down to my old list of people for posters, and make out a separate sheet for each contact, and start down the list, talking to lots of people for a long time, and I'm happy that John's out, but I'll have to figure some way to pay about 2/3 the overage on the telephone this month. Make my first appointment, at Litton, for 10 am on Monday, and THAT is some direction, and get some definite NOs already, but the IBM OLD president seems very encouraging, and that WOULD be a plum! By then it's 5 and I shave and get out to Azak's, dressed in a white shirt and trousers because it's humid out, but it's also coolish as I walk down the street, and he gives me 4 super-tetracycline antibiotics to REALLY break up the drainage per day, and for 14 days that's 56 capsules, at 604 apiece, he's given me $33.60 worth of medicine, which makes the $100 bill he says he'll send me SOMEWHAT more palatable (since that included 4-5 extra head X-rays, too), and of course all the computerized blood tests. Out of his place about 6:45 (since he didn't come until 6:25, and didn't even apologize for being late until I was snide with him), and drop in on Eddie at "Frankenstein" and find that the "bath" scene was intended as the "bats" scene, but I sit through the whole thing, chilly in the too-conditioned theater, get home at 8:30 in the windy-chilly streets, shivering, cold, pop into a hot bath, too ill-feeling to smoke, eat, start reading "Tales of Algernon Blackwood," and at 11:15 my temperature is 101.4E. No WONDER I feel ill! Watch "Warner Brothers---a 50 Year Salute" with Bette Davis and George Segal to 1, "House that Screamed" (end of, where Lili Palmer's SON has been killing the girls) to 1:30. Bed.
DIARY 8678
SATURDAY, JUNE 15. Wake to take my temperature at 7:15 and it's "only" 99.8E, much better. Lay around, up to read more of the Blackwood tales, really getting hooked on them, have breakfast but don't exercise, and try to get in touch with Azak to see if I should take the pills with a fever, but figure it's not going to cause TOO much trouble, so I take them, and he said it probably helped lower the fever. 9:15 it was down to 99.3E but then at 10:15 it was back up to 99.6E, where it stayed for most of the day until 7:15, when it was feeling worse and it was up to 100.3E again. Called Fred Courtney to join Paul and his friend when they called on Thursday to come over on Saturday, but Rolf was busy, pity, and I couldn't bring myself to call Bob Rosinek. Debated about canceling tonight because I felt so awful, but then figured since there were going to be three of them anyway, they could have sex while I sat in the living room and watched TV, and I didn't like to have orgies cancelled out from under me, so I let it go. Just lay down on the sofa in ultimate funk from about 3 to 5, just to gather strength, then washed the dishes and put things away so that the apartment would be in shape for this evening, baked some peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies which were again awful, so much for THAT set of mixes, and read through most of the day. Then settle down to "Where Did the Colorado Go?" on Channel 13 from 7:30 to 8:30, a terrifying story of a river that just DOESN'T reach the sea: it's TOTALLY used up! And they're going to be making more demands on it, which will of course cut out the bit Mexico received by "treaty." Yeah. Then into the last chapter of "War and Peace" from 8:30 to 10:30, the end TOO dragged out in the final peace, and I began wondering what had happened to Fred, who called at 10:35 to say he was just leaving, then Paul and a fairly cute blond David Sears come in at 10:40 and we start talking about "The Magic Show" and various puppet shows, and Bill Baird and his rail-less puppet theaters, and finally Fred arrives, looking just GREAT at 11:30, and we talk AGAIN until about 12:30, when finally we smoke, but CONTINUE talking, and FINALLY get undressed (see DIARY 8679), and Fred finally leaves at 3 and Paul and I drop off to sleep.
DIARY 8680
SUNDAY, JUNE 16. Wake about 7 to hear the rain pouring down outside, feeling awful from a combination of the cold and a hangover from all the booze last night, though thankfully my nose is manageable without slurping. We touch only vaguely, feeling strangerish without grass, and decide it's surely not a beach day, and I don't even offer him breakfast, rather lousy of me, though he uses my toothbrush, leaving toothpaste all over the place as after a battle with a creature with Sensodyne blood. I walk him to the St. George for a paper and then he goes for his car, and I read the Times to find that I want to watch TV for exactly an hour and a half this week, all before 2 pm on Sunday! Watch Camera Three on Harlem, pretty dreary, and I'm through with the Times and work the puzzle while watching "The Turbulent Ocean," even worse than Nova with the telling HOW they found anything, and then only a TINY bit in the last five minutes about WHAT they found. Then back to read the last story in the Blackwood book, feeling rather nice about finishing that, but that's about 3:30, and I fall onto the bed to sleep until 5, and my temperature hovers about one degree above normal for the whole day. Eat and don't exercise because I feel so weak, and I fret about not having done anything about the Momentum and Gravitation writing assignment, but I just don't FEEL like it! Call Paul and we agree to meet at 7 on the corner, and I drag myself through a shower and then Susan MacMahon's sister calls and wants to go to Europe at the end of July! Get all the information from her and chat with her, feeling great about THAT, and get dressed to go out for the evening, not feeling TOO sick anymore. Get cruised by an old guy on the corner, as usual, but there are some REAL BEAUTIES on the streets of the Village, none of whom look at me, and the muscles are getting better all the time. Paul drives up in his Karmann-Ghia red convertible at 7:05, finds a parking space immediately, and we're in to the great duplex with some adorable people and some awful people, and the party IS truly MIXED (see DIARY 8681). Out QUITE stoned at 11, home delightfully high, and come with pornography, remember I hadn't taken a pill, take one, eat cake and toast and grapefruit and peanuts, then take a SECOND pill to keep up to date, and fall wearily into bed at 12:30.
DIARY 8682
MONDAY, JUNE 17. Wake at 7, feeling totally spaced out, and set the alarm for 8:30 just in case I fall asleep and miss the 10 am appointment with Bloom at Litton. But I'm up shortly after that when the people upstairs get up and start clumping around, have breakfast, and pack for the entire day: when I'd talked to Azak at his office on Friday, he suggested I come up and have lunch with him on Monday after talking to the people in Harlem Hospital about my trip to Africa. Out at 9:30, uncomfortable in my green suit and shirt and tie, and get in at 10:10, having to wait for him, dripping from the humidity and my fast walk over from Penn Station, and he hears about 16 days and immediately stops me: "We don't give over 10 days of vacation to more than 15-20 people." So much for THAT. If I want to put up other posters, they'll put up three or two of them. Then get up to Azak's at 11, dripping more than ever, read until he arrives, and he introduces me to Dr. Lee (rather Scotty gets him), who talks to Dr. Mandeville, who's President of the CIR (Committee of Interns and Residents?) for the entire CITY, which WOULD be a coup, but Mandeville has ALREADY been approached, asks Lee what's in it for HIM, and says I should talk to Dr. Maxey, the rep for THIS hospital. Before that, we're down to the cafeteria for a fairly decent meal that Azak gives one of his coupons for, though the ravioli was almost meatless, and talk to Maxey at 3, then down to help Azak stuff envelopes, then to Amicus and Sylvan someone, a one-man show (though a girl comes to help him part time), who has all the charters at his fingertips and "hot" tickets from Air France for $250 round-trip tickets for the empty seats they would otherwise have had. Home at 6:30 after a long, dragged-out, hot trip, feeling AWFUL, and there's a note from Arnie, so when I'm feeling better I call and we arrange to go to the Club later if we both feel like it. I get to Momentum finally, but just CAN'T concentrate, so I call him at 10 and say "Let's go," and we drive there (I'd smoked), and then I suggest he pick up the pies THEN before his trip, so we do, eating a mousse, THEN to the baths at 11:30 for an INCREDIBLE evening (see DIARY 8683), leaving at 3, getting home at 3:45, and bed at 4 am!
DIARY 8684
TUESDAY, JUNE 18. I'd put a sign on my door saying "John, I'll be back at 10:30 to 11," but I was up quite definitely at 9:30, so I took the sign off the door, had breakfast and took the pills, then started back on the travel business, calling Pat Teller and chatting about the new itinerary, then calling Peggy and talking about HER trip (and it's her brother's), and both seem to be going nicely. Later in the afternoon Bob Grossman calls and says NOT ONE WORD about his tickets, so I assume my FIRST sale went OK! He wants me to schedule a do for Thursday night, so later I call Rolf, who says maybe, call Fred but don't get him until tomorrow morning, and HE says maybe, since he's going out of town for the weekend, then to Florida for a couple of weeks, THEN to Maine, and THEN to Europe! Wow! Also call Gordon for more brochures, since I'm down to my last purple African one. Have a late lunch, type seven diary pages to catch up to date, and then at 3:45 get back to the Momentum article for Latham, getting through with it at 8:15, though it's on the short side by less than 10%. Feeling poorly, getting sort of dizzy, and have rather pressing diarrhea from the pills. Have dinner, then drag myself back to start reading the various articles on gravitation, and do that only from 9:45 to 10:15, but I can hardly read anymore, and I just have to get to bed at 10:30. So I put earplugs in and start to shiver under the covers, then get up to take my temperature, 99.2E, and put on a doubled blanket. But that turns out to be too hot, so I take that off. Fall asleep and wake for some reason at 3 am, dry of mouth, so I have some water, shit and piss, and then feel that I want to WRITE something, and with my temperature at 99.8E I feel that something might be wanting to come through, so I get up and get paper to write "3 A.M." (see DIARY 8685) until 3:45, then start reading it aloud and FEELING it and polishing it, laying miserably (yet still comfortably) in bed, and finish with it at 4:15, with another glass of water by my side, and maybe I should have waited to take my second pill of the evening NOW, rather than only 1 hour after I took the one after I finished dinner at 9:30, and I wonder how many of my various malaises might not be caused by poor eating times. But the stiffness of my calves is DEFINITELY due to the strain for sex at the Club.
DIARY 8686
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19. Out of bed at about 9:30, shocking to me, since that means I got about 92 hours sleep, which I must have needed. Feel somewhat better, have breakfast, and get everything together for the "grand round" that comes with unemployment (after calling Fred Courtney and getting a "maybe" for tomorrow night). Then take out 10 items to be dry cleaned for $10 (only THEN remembering the MACHINE dry cleaners!), to unemployment, to the post office for stamps (and then find a 104 postage due card in the mailbox), to the bank for green deposit slips and cash and depositing checks (and then find another unemployment check at home), and get the last of the food stamps (6 books in all, so I got paid somewhat over $6 per hour for the hassle of getting them, worth the effort, but probably not worth the effort AGAIN), and get home about 12:30 for the Village Voice and the mail. Lunch and then read the Voice, silly, since I want things to do after 11 besides type, and this takes away prime typing time. Then about 2 get back to calling Peggy and Pat, do lots of phoning for Peggy's tour, since everything is either full or cancelled, and get no REAL progress, but learning a lot about how charters and tour groups operate (and don't operate). Finish about 3:30 and then determine to catch up with diary, so type two pages, and finally get back to "Gravitation" at 4 pm, Work straight through until 7, when it occurs to me that I DID want to get to WSDG, and I have about 1500 words anyway, more than 1/3 the article, in pretty close to finished form, so the possibility of being finished by 2 pm Friday looks pretty good. (George Allen called this morning, wants me to work on the outline for Chapter 1 on Friday, too. Hope that'll be the END of it.) Dinner quick and out at 7:40 to get to WSDG just at 8, having pen-corrected half the article so far on the subway. The meeting is somewhat better than the last one because Eddie Jimenez and Dominick Marino are there to chat with, I've put in an appearance, and the topic was at least possible (see DIARY 8687). Though I'd wanted to leave early, I leave at 10:30, getting home at 11, ruining the whole night, don't feel like working, debating about coming at 11:30, and figure if I have 98.5-98.7E temperature, I'm OK and will come. 99.0E. Bed.
DIARY 8688
THURSDAY, JUNE 20. Finish with morning stuff at 9 after getting up at 7:45, sleeping good with earplugs in. Then work on the Gravity article from 9-12:30, doing four more pages in the 32 hours, good. Lunch, worried for a moment that I don't have anything in the house, and then back to finish the last bit on the tides between 1 and 2:30, finished in enough time to make the bed and wash the dishes before Bob Grossman comes over this evening. Fred and Rolf haven't called, so I figure sex tonight with them is off. Then get the first call from friends of Arnie: Stanley and Ellen Nash who are flying to London with their child, and business looks to be GOOD! Call Amicus and Fran to get charter and Laker information, and stall them until July 1. Then I shave and have done everything but take a bath, out at 3:10 for the long walk to the F train, but it's just into the station and I get to the corner of Houston and Allen to watch the panorama of screaming kids, cruising straights in cars, park-dating, hydrant-spraying, kid-eating, PR-family togetherness hanging out of windows. Bob shows up VERY tanned and attractive at 3:35, we walk down to the graffitied Hamilton Fish library to find the films ARE on, walk a bit, he HATES the slums, we're in for four GREAT films: "Experiments in Motion Graphics" on computers with FABULOUS stuff, "Lapis" untitled is a GREAT trip to Indian music and FINE drawings; "Pas de Deux" suffers by comparison, and it's so noisy the music has little effect, and "Exploring with a Time-Lapse Camera," which is directed to 12-year-olds, but good anyway. Out at 5, pass through the Essex Street Retail Market (Sex Street Tail Market from the right angle), home at 5:20, forcing him with me, pick up the MATTACHINE BALLOT WITH POSTAGE DUE---A GAA TACTIC???, and home in the heat to listen to the Bogart tape, get no calls, out to Chuan Yuan at 7:30 for a dinner he doesn't like, paying $6.50 for orange chicken and moo shu pork, both I think good, then he leaves at 9:30 and we have, finally, a chat about our relationship, and I guess I have a decision to make about his "Sisters; no sex" attitude (see DIARY 8689). Home at 10 to get to correcting the draft, and it all goes well and hangs together by 12:45, so I've FINISHED it on time, very happily, get to bed to COME from 1 to 1:45 with bidis and poppers and porno, then listen to some records and bed at 2:15, EASILY!
DIARY 8690
FRIDAY, JUNE 21. Wake at 8 and get to the supermarket at 8:15, thinking it opened at 8, but it doesn't, so I get to retyping the final article on Gravitation for Latham from 8:45 to 9:20, then go out for groceries in the almost empty store and back to have breakfast and type from 10:40 to 12:35, having telephoned poor Peggy Carozza and hearing her say she feels Europe is impossible this year, and that she'll have to find someplace to go for 8 days over the weekend. I shave and shower and have lunch and leave at 1:40, getting to Latham just at 2:10 as it gets wildly dark outside and pours rain. He glances through the Gravitation article and appears to love it, and then we discuss ideas of Chapter 1 (after chatting about Joseph Campbell for a bit), and when I leave at 4:50 I have the chapter to write, 30 manuscript pages, and he's even willing to give me three weeks to do it, which would make it due July 12---great! Leave feeling good, it's raining so I duck down into the nearest subway entrance I find on the south side of 42nd, and down some steps I never knew existed, and there's a waiting subway and it's the RIGHT end of the VERY SHUTTLE TO TIMES SQUARE THAT I WAS WANTING TO TAKE! Amazed at this stroke of luck and get to Times Square just before the crowd at 5, so I get a seat home. John's shut my window because it was raining so hard, and I discover I can't find my dry-cleaning slip, so I spend some time looking for that, then have dinner at 7, playing records to drown out the horrible howling of the fellow on the ground floor, and get out at 7:00 for the West Side Gay Theater with Arnie's TDF vouchers, all 8 of them, and the place is almost empty when I get there, but they end with a fairly good crowd. The performance are fairly awful (see DIARY 8691). Back to the Heights feeling VERY lonely, and decide to walk along the Promenade to find SOMEONE, and chance upon Rolf sitting reading the Times. Sit down with him at 11:30 and we talk and talk and talk (see DIARY 8692) to 2:45, not even wanting to stop the chatting at the corner of Pierrepont and Hicks. We both enjoy it enormously however, and I wander home amazed at how my wonder with what to do with the REST of the evening was completely solved. Bed at 3 am and up at 10, about the latest yet!