1974 5 of 8
DIARY 8693
SATURDAY, JUNE 22. Up at 10 and don't feel like doing ANYTHING. Force myself to three diary pages, then determine to get started on sending the half-page outlines of articles to the New York Times Travel Section, so I thumb through the brochures and make out a tentative list of eight destinations that I'll describe, then thumb through the India-RTW trip diary to find the pages that I devote to various suburbs of Kathmandu, sort through the travel files to get out the old articles and see what they were like from the Times, and then get hung up in the Himalayas, ending by reading through "Annapurna to Dhaulagiri," but halfway through I just feel so awful that I have to lie down and take a nap (this is from 4 to 4:45). Also looked through everything this morning trying to locate the slip for the dry cleaners, which I can't find anywhere, and that's rather depressing. Take my temperature to make sure I don't have a fever, though it feels like I have SOMETHING, and resolve that I HAVE to get down to exercising, since I'm getting that stuffed do-nothing feeling that comes from reading all the time. Also, I took some time out to read through some of the Science-Fiction stories just to pass the time, had lunch, and finally got the envelopes from TNT to send to the hotels, but I just don't FEEL like doing that, either. Lunch is a drag, eating pecan cookies with lots of milk to drag myself out even more, and sometime this morning when I was just sitting and reading I started playing with my cock, and ended up going into the bedroom and getting out some little pornography and having an orgasm, just out of lack of anything to do. But then I assuage my angst with the thought that it IS the weekend, I HAVE just put in a lot of work on the Latham articles, so I could DESERVE a bit of doing nothing, so I settled down into reading more of the science-fiction, not even bothering to go to the cleaners. Then shower and want to do SOMETHING useful, and start getting sausage broiled at 7, check the ticket to see the performance starts at 8, not 8:30, so I speed through dinner and get out at 7:35, getting in at 8:05 for the performance of the Armenian State Dance Ensemble (see DIARY 8694), out at 10:30, home at 11 with the Times, watch a bit of the Rock Concert---nothing---and bed tired at 12:30.
DIARY 8695
SUNDAY, JUNE 23. Up at 8:30, still fatigued (though the soreness of the calves had gone about two days ago), and for the past couple of days I've been getting a slightly DIFFERENT sort of smell, a sort of spicy rotten odor that's heightened when I smell the glass that I expectorate into. Yesterday's glass was about half full, today's only about 1/4, so there MIGHT be some progress. There are no flaky cakes around the nostrils in the morning, there is no series of honks to be able to breathe at night. But there are still times when I'm reading and there's just a drip drip drip from the nose of a sticky salty texture. Finish the Times, happy that I'd torn up BOTH puzzles and thrown them down the toilet last night, watch Camera Three in a funny "Homage to the Horse" with Jack Whittaker as a straw-camp narrator, and then have BREAKFAST at 11:30, then lunch at 1:30, and I'm still reading in the science fiction, finishing "Science Fiction Hall of Fame" this afternoon, but I still don't feel like getting down to anything useful, so I take the "Gay Militants" off the kitchen table and start reading through THAT, but I get tired. Played with myself this morning, but then John hit for the paper and that put me down. Read and read and read, through the rain, feeling sorry for poor Bob Grossman at the island, at least free as a guest, and water the plants about 5, and THEN remember that today was the day for the fertilizer, so I'll have to do it tomorrow. Then determine to exercise, breathlessly at 6, then brush my teeth for the first time today, shower to wash my hair, eat dinner about 7, then settle down to listen to the Armenian record, not very good, AWFUL recording techniques, smoke at 8:30 and listen to more music, trying to get the collection separated into stoned and non-stoned, and then get into the bedroom to jerk off about 10, doing it only fairly well, then back to eat more peanuts, finish off the sherry (too much after a glass of wine with dinner), listen to more music, and then just feel too tired to continue with anything, turning off all the lights and getting into bed about 11:30, still depressed, wondering "What's next?" (see DIARY 8696). Earplugs in almost constantly, but think I hear phone ringing, making me uncomfortable.
DIARY 8698
MONDAY, JUNE 24. Wake at 7 and up about 7:15, tired of listening to her rocking off the same loud spot upstairs. Put everything away from last night, fertilize the plants as I should have yesterday, and catch up to date with four diary pages. Then hammer in the nails to attach the curtain to form a screen to the "balcony," go out for the dry cleaning, having no trouble locating it when I say "seven pullovers" (and that very EVENING I find the slip, which had fallen into the rolled-up poster drawer, probably when I was showing things to Bob on Thursday, while I was searching for old stamp drawers), and bring up the mail, taking to John who says that he's leaving TOMORROW for his two weeks away. I exercise, shower, and then have lunch, and though I WANT to get to outlining the things for the Times, I try to figure how to divide the geography of the world into 11 sessions, get to working on THAT, with complete lists of countries from the New York Times and World Almanac (and the Times is missing a number, like Poland?), and categorize these, then think of the idea of giving a DETAIL or two about each country, and then an "extra" of a personal nature, just so the class will be broken into differing kinds of chatter---anything to give the impression of something different, and something not boring. Feel good with that. Call Bob to find he had a nice day Saturday, got to bed at 4, so he feels too pooped to even consider Man's Country tonight. I finish the plan, retyping it neatly for Steve next week, get a call from Shelly about WWW next week (so I have to finish "Whaddya Know?"). Have dinner while watching "The Male Menopause" on Channel 13 between 8-9, it hitting between "35 and 50," so I'm IN it. And then debate calling Rolf for the Club, working more, and then make a NEW do list and decide to get back to STAMPS, ending up by cutting most of the rest out of the book of Cyndy's father just to be FINISHED with that large thing---will soak them and finally just have a stack of COUNTRIES to sort into the album---and I've got a LARGE stack of stamps to soak and sort as the NEXT batch to do already. Tired at 11:45, so I get to bed at 12, having the dreams typed on DIARY 8697 just before and after waking at 7:10 am tomorrow.
DIARY 8699
TUESDAY, JUNE 25. Up at 8 to type two pages quickly, before the dreams of DIARY 8697 are forgotten. John has left, slipping a note under my door to take the rest of the milk he left, and when I woke up I had a hard-on, so I jerked off quickly, just to get it over with---that's why I didn't feel like coming TONIGHT, when I'd sort of planned on it. The major portion of the day was devoted to telephone calling, and for the heck of it I kept a list of the 18 or more calls I made during the day, which is put just for the record onto DIARY 8700. Work officially on the African Safari from 10 to 12, but there are other travel calls in there. Still don't feel like going into the New York Times Travel articles for some reason, so I get into the New School Homosexuality course plan after lunch, and that takes quite awhile. Down for the mail and get the brochures from my call to Gordon yesterday, so I can write a letter to Rulli, and then I send for a couple of brochures in Trip'N Travel envelopes, and re-file all the travel stuff in a way to make it more accessible. Get hungry early (probably because I exercised for the second straight day), and put pork meat on to bake at 5:45, then talk to Mary Lefkarites and eat at 6:25, but the meat is merely warm, not yet really BAKED---an hour tomorrow. Fuss with more calls (OH, FORGOT that for the better part of a couple of hours I went through the draft of "Waddya KNOW?" so that I could take it in when I go in next week. ANOTHER BIG ITEM OFF THE LIST that had been there for months, and I'll HAVE to get around to the Times travel soon, since there's not much ELSE left on the list!), and correct and re-do the homosexuality course, make the last few calls, and then get down at 10 to the removing of the rest of the stamps from the album, fussing in my mind about the possibilities of getting robbed, since Avi's been robbed the SECOND time and isn't going to summer school because of it. Then have popcorn and smoke for Pilobolus on Channel 13 at 11:30, but it's not ON, so I watch the second part of "Frankenstein" on Wide World of Mystery from 11:30 to 1, not bad, good sympathetic Frankenstein who dies with his master in his arms, and finish with cookies and milk, getting instantly to sleep at 1.
DIARY 8701
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26. Up at 9 to eat and exercise and type two pages and telephone a couple of people before getting out to unemployment, then back to work most of the day on the outline and retyping of the New School Homosexuality course, mailing that out in the evening, and get to the outlines for the Times articles on travel, getting into lots of folders, and in my search for a specific folder I take down all the folders on the unlabeled shelf and sort them out into various countries, but still don't find what I want, and then it's in the file drawer, which I can transfer to bookcases if I want more space in the file cabinet. Fuss with the idea of putting up the wire tiny bookcase that I got from New Century, but it doesn't easily go anywhere, so I pile it back into the closet. Talk to Bob Grossman on the phone and get a little annoyed with him for always saying that he feels so awful, and I tell him that he's acting just as I did, trying to make myself unattractive to someone who's always trying to get me in bed but who I don't want to go to bed with. And he admits that he thinks I'm "after his little bod," and I'm afraid that I AM, but I can't let him know that. Lately start dropping hints about how nice Rolf is. Then I bake the rest of the meat and get a long call from Mary Lefkarites (or else it was yesterday), and I also probably soaked the first of the lot of stamps, just to see how it would go. Didn't buy the Voice until after I came back from WSDG, and didn't read it until Friday, so I sadly missed the announcement that Robert Sheckley would be at the Science-Fiction bookstore on Thursday. DRAT, miss reading it on Wednesday only ONCE, and miss something that very time! Then have dinner of the roast meat and get out to West Side at 8:00, getting there in plenty of time before the meeting starts at 8:30, and see Bobbi to have her say she'd decided that the Ways and Means Committee couldn't act on this, it would have to be brought to the Board of Directors, so that'll be ANOTHER couple of weeks before hearing about the response. The National Gay Task Force has the meeting, and I meet Greg Dawson, with whom I set up a meeting tomorrow, and get back to come over porno and LOTS of grass and poppers, getting to sleep VERY late, stoned.
DIARY 8703
THURSDAY, JUNE 27. Up to start working on stamps, and get sort of sucked into them, soaking away, and don't even do the page from the diary for yesterday, and don't get started back on the Times article outlines. Feel a bit guilty about it, but it's such a pleasure to sit in the sunny corner (but it's been raining most of the week, much to poor Bob's displeasure), poring over the stamps, and then I water both MY flowers and JOHN'S flowers for the first time, and his grass looks mighty skimpy because he has them planted so closely together. Maybe he'll let me buy some from him later on. Get things together for the National. Gay Task Force, and have lunch and get there at 1:30, but he's not back from lunch yet, so I help Vernon and a group of people folding and stapling and labeling the $10 invitation to a dirty movie, and chat with Joe Gistirak, who charges $12.50 for his group sessions, ridiculous!, and it turns out that Andrew Ramer has just come in from the coast from a relationship, and so we exchange numbers to set up our OWN group on the newly separated, and I call Marge to talk to her friend Frank to see if he'd want to join such a thing, too. Work on the labels, finding that Paul Cadmus lives AT 128 Remsen Street from their "Confidential" mailing list, and then in to talk to Greg at 4, and he says I should get up two questionnaires for members and for other organizations to see if they would be INTERESTED in some sort of group-travel planning done for them. I leave just before 5 with three pairs of posters under my arms for the Brooklyn Heights bars that Vernon gave me to pass out. Get home at 5:30, weary from the day, and have dinner, finishing at 7 to find Rolf ringing the bell and coming up the stairs to tell me his incredible plan for buying out and liquidating a REIT (see DIARY 8704). He again astounds me, but I have to disappoint him by not being able to go out to dinner with him, having just eaten. Then out at 9:30, great success with Piano, have to come back to see the manager at Danny's, and into the empty Gracie's Mansion at 10 to put them up myself there with staples and tape, and then back to Danny's at 11 to put it up, stop at Piano for a beer to see everyone ignore the sign, and back AGAIN to come with gusto over pornography, eating away, gorging myself!
DIARY 8705
FRIDAY, JUNE 28. Up and start and end the time at home with stamps, not even watering my flowers at ALL, since it's been so moist out, and get so many stamps in the pot, and have time to FUGUE (see DIARY 8717), that they actually begin to fall apart, and I'm amazed to find how many of the stamps were rather skillfully patched and repaired to look good in the album with bits of paper and tape. But the soaking gets rid of all that, plus the gum on the back of a lot of mint stamps that were ruined by the poor hinges, and I thumb through the albums one MORE time to check to make sure I haven't missed anything, and then very determinedly put each one into the wastebasket after I finish looking through it, so I won't be tempted to keep any of them for gifts (hardly the best gift for a kid starting on collecting: a 1953 album!) or for reference (though the 1916 album IS quite a rarity, so I clip out the maps from the front and the advertisements from the back, just for nostalgia purposes, to look at when I'm 80 and it's 100 years old! But it's so moist that they really don't dry in time, so at 6 I have to shower and shave and get out to meet Bob Grossman at the Quad (with my rainsuit on) for "Streetcar Named Desire" which he wanted so much to see, and since I hadn't seen it since October, 1958, it's time I saw it again, and I hardly remembered much of it, except that it isn't a TRULY spectacular movie, so I won't remember it very well from the SECOND time, either. But Brando WAS very pretty in the arms and chest. Then down to 7th to eat in Poppy's delicatessen, me having broiled fish (and I should get it FRIED!) with potatoes and string beans, pretty bad, and Bob had a pastrami and potato salad and slaw, his favorite meal. Out at 10 and over to the Club Baths, which has some spectacular people there, but none of them I can get very close to, so I'm rather disappointed (see DIARY 8706). We leave at 1:15 in the drizzle, he getting a cab fairly quickly, and I get into the subway JUST as an F train comes through, so I'm home almost before he is, and I guess I jerk off AGAIN, probably fairly limply, since I'm getting pretty depressed about my getting nothing interesting in the line of sex for a LONG time. For the FIRST time I didn't do much but cover the bottom of the snot-glass, pills HAVE broken it.
DIARY 8707
SATURDAY, JUNE 29. Up at 9, thankful that the woman upstairs has gone out, and then get right into the stamps, even before breakfast, and sort them all out and find that I have 66 countries to go again, and paste in 10 to get me back down to 32, 16, and 8, for 56, but find that I had two stacks of Japan for there are 55 countries left, which I put into envelopes and put the whole thing back into the drawer, since I now have SO much work to do and am SO far behind in doing it that I really can't be TEMPTED by stamps for a long time. Put away the table and chair so that it's clear to sweep, and then talk to Bob and Paul to try to arrange a meeting for this evening, and down for the mail and there's a return from Galaxy of "Tell-M" and it's signed by ROBERT SHECKLEY, saying that it was "interesting, well-written" but that it was only background and now I should put it into a STORY. Wander around in a daze from THAT, having to totally AGREE, now, I guess, with what Meredith's been telling me all along, and I decide I have to see what ELSE they did in Galaxy to see what kind of a story it has to BE. Before that, however, I'm starved from no breakfast, and almost have brunch, but decide that I should clear up the meat that I'd gotten too much of from the supermarket on Thursday when I shopped, so I have hamburger and vegetables for a huge brunch, and then settle down for the rest of the afternoon and finish the rest of "Galaxy," particularly liking "Orbitsville" by Bob Shaw, so much so that I'll be buying the NEXT TWO copies of Galaxy to continue it, but the REST of the stories are stupid army-battle-prehistoric stories with banal characters and only the most rudimentary plots, so I don't have to do TOO much. But SHECKLEY saying that it was INTERESTING AND WELL-WRITTEN has just BLOWN my mind. Scrub the sink and tub and curtain and dust and do the floors before I have dinner at 7:30, and then it's time to get out at 9 to meet Paul in front of Mattachine, get into a tired Drew (though they got $475 today!) for a copy of the Times which has my "Historically Speaking" in it, then over at 10:15 to WSDG, an AWFUL group, though I say hello to Eddie and Richard and Vernon and Frank Kameny and Bobbi and Fred, and then we're out in a round of bars that goes until 3 am, I get home at 3:45, come with gusto and despair, and get to bed at 4:55, feeling TOTALLY disgusted!
DIARY 8710
SUNDAY, JUNE 30. Wake quickly at 10:10, weary-eyed after only 53 hours sleep, but I figure that the parade won't start exactly at 11, and I don't even seem to be able to muster the "courage," though why I can't I can't imagine, to call Mattachine to find the actual TIME of the start of the parade, except that I fear getting Drew Betterton who will recognize my voice and jeer me silently for not knowing the time of the march. Don't even bother to eat, but shower and dress and get out at 11, and the day isn't as unmixed a joy as it was last time I did it in 1972 (see DIARY 8711). The march actually starts at 12, march up until 3 to get to the park, then see the groups coming in, listen to speakers in the hot sun until 4:30, then walk tired across to 72nd and home by 5:30, having bacon to assuage my hunger, and then settle down to watch the end of "Star Trek" from 7:30 to 8, something about a mental takeover of Spock by someone from somewhere else who started blind and dumb and ended up seeing and talking as he sent her back to where she came from. Then 7:30 to 8 watch the last of the FBI, as they chased down the man and the bomb so that it didn't destroy part of Atlanta, then watch a nobody Mike Conners as "Mannix" from 8:30 to 9:30, about finding a son who'd been accused of raping a Spanish girl, but actually the son of the sheriff, played by a grizzly Howard Duff, had done it, and the son decided to stay in the woods after trying to bring his mother and father back together again. Then 9:30 to 10 watch the second half of Jane Goodall being accepted "as a peer" (and was Orson Welles smiling?) by chimpanzees, and by then my urge to laze made me turn off TV and get stoned, come twice, eating the rest of the peanuts, a whole bottle of soda, lots of cookies, while listening to record after record after record, going through about a dozen of them, and I just felt totally like not doing anything, sorry about the BEAUTIFUL people whose bodies I'd seen during the march, to give me more to regret not having, though I never would have been able to have them at ANY age or level of enthusiasm, but they continue to make me heartsick enough to waste an entire evening. To bed about 1, full, disgusted, depressed.
DIARY 8712
MONDAY, JULY 1. Spend the entire morning trying to get caught up with everything, putting things away from the feast last night, and watering all the plants and taking out the laundry, and getting into such conversations that I HAVE to type out DIARY 8704 for this uncanny day! Then get to typing 9 pages to at least get caught up with the diary, getting through yesterday anyway, and making all kinds of appointments and making some necessary travel calls, and then Shelly calls to say that our session tomorrow is cancelled, so I CAN get in the movies that I wanted to see tomorrow at the Carnegie Hall Cinema. Call Kevin and stupidly say for him to call me tomorrow, when I know perfectly well I'm not going to be HOME tomorrow, and when I get through with the typing and showering and shaving and cleaning up, it's time to get out to Marty's class at 5:55, JUST getting there as he's shutting the door, and he discusses Shakespeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor," which I've never really seen outside of "Falstaff" at the Met, and plays excerpts from Nikolai's "Lustige Wivern" or whatever, and the class is VERY depressing: the same guy and woman from before, an old constantly-smiling woman who seems to understand nothing, a friend from the ARMY who sits in the back of the room working on something else, and then Regina comes in, reacts in surprise to see me, and Marty says I should come in next Monday to see the "Much Ado" as set by Berlioz in "Beatrice and Benedict." Probably not. Home at 8 and listen to the station that John's going to be on at 9, making dinner, and record his program from 9 to 9:30, and then just sit and read and listen to music until "Pilobolus and Joan" comes on TV at 10 to 11, and though it's overly long in some parts, most of it is good with GREAT juxtapositions of their cockroach and fields and streets and her face, and some FUNNY scenes of them all in bed together, for example. But it probably would have been better edited down to half an hour. They did LOTS of segments from their old pieces, but they weren't yet at their best, though the exposure is marvelous for them of course. Can't find anything else to do, so I get to bed about 11:30 to try to catch up on sleep, since tomorrow's going to be a BUSY day.
DIARY 8713
TUESDAY, JULY 2. Up at 7:20, but I still don't have time to wash my hair and shower and eat breakfast and water my plants and fix up the apartment and get out much before 9:10, so I don't get to Logical Technical Services until 9:30, though I bill from 9:15, and talk to Graham awhile about the index that I'm to evaluate, and then the Tellers come over to talk to me at 10:15, and I go off to her office and HE is just a blond DOLL with great green eyes, a marvelous glowing skin and look and THEY flip out when I tell them that I've traveled so much because I'm so much older than they are, and they laugh and joke and freak out when I tell them I'm 38. But Joe Teller is SUCH a doll it's a delight to talk with them. He has to leave for some reason at 11:15, and I'm back to the indexing, working while Graham goes to lunch, and a couple of people come up to say hello to me, and it's a NICE group of people they have there. Leave at 12:45 after phoning Bob Rosinek and agreeing to meet at the Chock Full O' Nuts across from Macy's, and the day is VERY hot in my white shirt and briefcase, and when he's late I fear that the joint he'd just shared with his boss at Schiffli had disoriented him enough to make him forget the plans, but he showed up about 1:05, we went to an adjoining coffee shop to sit in the window to look at the passersby, and I had a ham and egg sandwich which cost $2.65, ridiculous, but it WAS good, and he gave me "Uri" and I gave him "Seth" and we left at 2:15, saying we'd have to see each other to talk about John, and I'd have to meet his friend Wally and we'd form a threesome. Subway up to the Carnegie Hall Cinema for "First Circle" end and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch," neither of which I'd seen before, both Scandinavian made, and fairly good, though how the country can TOLERATE such treatment is beyond me. I guess I'd get OUT or maybe kill myself, but I'll never know until I'm forced to live through it MYSELF. Out at 5:45 and up to John's just at 6, riding on the elevator with Adair, and John serves a FABULOUS cold dinner of cold cuts and potato salad and iced tea, and I tell them about Seth and stoned and Wheeler and writing and Relativity, then we play Canasta, Ivan and John and I, and Ivan and I end up TIED at 3090, I draw a QUEEN to win the draw, and leave when Ivan has to get to bed at 10:30, subwaying home, and then COME!
DIARY 8714
WEDNESDAY, JULY 3. Maybe I DIDN'T come last night. In fact, when I got home I settled down to read the first hundred-odd pages of "Uri" until I got tired, and then crawled into my hot bed, where all I needed was a sheet across my shoulders, leaving my bottom parts out to enjoy the coolness of the night air. Then up about 9 (having gotten to bed at 1) and read AGAIN all the rest of "Uri" until about 11, and then I called Graham Gross and said I'd be in about 1:30, but by the time I showered and shaved and ate lunch, it was 1:30 then, and so I got to work to pay my Blue Cross-Blue Shield premium to the Logical Technical Services group, told the Tellers when their plane left, since they'd had their reservations confirmed by Fran, who forgot to tell me about them, and again I marveled at the manly beauty of Joe Teller, and Pat came over to tell me again and again how wonderful she though I was for being so active and so OLD! Others passed by, saying they remembered me from before, and I worked from 2 to 4:20 on the Indexing project, filling out the form that Graham gave me, saying that I worked until 4:30, which I don't think he liked, but I surely worked closer to FIVE hours, which I billed, then I worked to FOUR hours. Then got home in the steaming heat, not feeling like doing anything, and I'd moved the pot into the kitchen window and then had difficulty deciding whether to fix my own dinner in my own kitchen in the nude with Mrs. Gray hanging out the laundry upstairs, but I decided not to FLAUNT my nudity, but just did what I had to do, and ate, leaving at 8:10 to get to WSDG at 8:40, just in time to pay my $2 and get to a seat next to Richard and Eddie before the announcements started and then the panel with the four who had lived abroad started (see DIARY 8715). Out at 11 after giving my name to about half a dozen people, and got to the Promenade to talk to Rolf to 12:30 and not feeling like sleeping yet, so I (forgot to mention ABOVE that I jerked off after finishing "Uri" at 11, just for the sake of doing it, feeling VERY stupid) read a few more chapters of "Ada" while sipping ice water in the overly hot evening, and it's almost bad enough for ME to bring in the fan and circulate the air in the very stuffy room. But fall asleep about 1:00, sweating slightly in the 80E+ night.
DIARY 8721
THURSDAY, JULY 4. Up at 9, and the woman upstairs has either quieted down or moved away for the weekend, which is nice. Out to a sticky day where the temperature is up to 94E and the humidity at 45% combines for a temperature-humidity index of 83, pretty miserable. I moon about in the morning, doing the nonsense things described in DIARY 8716, having breakfast late, not exercising, and then type some diary pages before settling down with drawn window shades to watch Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in "Road to Singapore," and they never even GET to Singapore, and except for a native-dance sequence barely use the idea that they're in the vicinity of Indonesia on the island retreat of "Kaigoon." Try calling Bob Grossman a couple of times, but he's obviously on the island for the long weekend. Paul Bosten calls later in the evening to say that he has my jacket (he thought I'd gone to the car to TAKE it), is going to Buffalo to be Treasurer for an arts festival from Tuesday through August, and I have lunch during the show, then finish up with the 11 pages to catch up to date, and then finally get down to WORK for the first time (at home) in TWO WEEKS, though I figure I should consider my writing work and think it a good idea to WORK 40-50 hours a week, just so I don't feel so LAZY, and yet give my brain credit for working when I'm WRITING. Skim through a few Travel Agency Magazines, a Scientific American, and a New York in the morning, also, as well as read the Voice, not missing anything THIS week. Work from 4:15 to 7:15 on the first chapter of the Physical Sciences book, typing 7 1/3 pages of a GOOD first draft in the three hours (a GOOD first draft is one in which I'll probably edit and type the final version FROM it). Then have dinner, the last of the smelly meat, from 8, watching "All Quiet on the Western Front" and the battle scenes are really GREAT. Smoke at 9:15 and swing out to a crowded Promenade for tiny fireworks from Governor's Island, and what REALLY looks to be a flying saucer causes comment from the crowd (see DIARY 8722), I stay to cruise ineffectively until 12:15, tired, home to shower to get rid of the sweat and get to bed at 1, temperature 90+E!
DIARY 8725
FRIDAY, JULY 5. Wake at 7:15, then doze until 8:45, having the dream described on DIARY 8723, then up to exercise, shower and wash my hair, eat breakfast, water both sets of plants (getting my coasters from John's cabinet, still things unsettled after over three months!), type three diary pages, and then get down to Chapter One for Latham, working on first-draft pages from 11:05 to 1:40, then have lunch, watch the last five minutes of "The Road to Morocco" where they're setting hotfoots on Moroccans and then sailing back across to the US when Hope goes into the "powder room," explodes the ship, cries out for water, and berates Bing for saying they're just out of New York City by saying "That was my best scene, now how can I get an Oscar?" Type the summary draft from 3:05 to 3:20, and then it starts to rain most gloriously, as described on DIARY 8724, and I watch it with pleasure, then back to work on the tables from 4 to 7:10, calling George Allen to sort of get his OK for it (saying I'll bill regular prices for each page of table in the manuscript), then have dinner and finish just before smoking for "Yellow Submarine," and it's still quite magical: the scene with Mr. Boob is still quite heartbreaking: he's SO like me and they're SO kind to him! Ringo's beginning sadness in Liverpool is tear-jerkingly voiced, also---he just sounds so CUDDLY. And then the SMILES on John's face as he goes into one of his fugues, and the GLORY of George Harrison's Indian saga are just magnificent. Finish the movie VERY tired at 9:30, too tired to even come, so I just flop into bed. At 11 there's a CRASH of breaking glass on the fire escape outside and I hear her footsteps, then saying something in the hallway, and I lay paralyzed, thinking there might be someone she can't see on the fire escape. I try to look out, can't see anything, then telephone her to hear her say that the top window had rotted so that it just fell out "I hope she fixes it soon, it's very open." I'm still a bit stoned, so when she says "I've been very busy, but I intend to answer your note, I like your forthrightness," I can just murmur "OK," and hang up. Back to bed, wake at 5:30, vaguely, then to sleep and dream (see DIARY 8726), up at 8:15.
DIARY 8727
SATURDAY, JULY 6. Up at 8:15, exercise, breakfast, shower, and type two pages, water plants, and get to Chapter One's table at 10, working through to 1:30, when I have lunch, then back to work from 2:10 to 5:10, when I decide I HAVE to get groceries, and go out to the nearly closing supermarket to buy $17+ worth of stuff, having to put back two oranges for 254 to have enough money to pay for it all. Home to pick up the mail, and get a letter from "Interplanetary Noose" saying, strangely "Zolnerzak, thinking about buying your S.S. "Contents of the . . ." . . . please advise . . . Robert Kent, Publisher." I hunt back and back to files for former WRITER magazines to find what the rates for Galaxy are to see if it's worthwhile to rewrite it for Sheckley or have Kent publish it at 54 a page (I GUESS that's what he's asking me to advise him about, since they have two rates of payment), but I can't FIND it, which pisses me off. Eat dinner about 8, having franks and beans so that I'll have everything to wash tonight, but then at 8:45 I see glorious purple cloud-streaks in the sky so I don't wash dishes but dress to go out and look at the sunset before buying the Times. It's too soon gone, but there are still strange cloud effects, and everyone's looking up at the new addition to the skies, the advertisements of the Goodyear BLIMP! There's a pretty awful crowd out, and I'm getting depressed with the whole human race. But then a blond comes past looking like a combination of Max von Sydow and the Tait fellow from "Let My People Come," and he's got a marvelous crotch-bulge, so when we Mickey-Mouse around the fence I follow him out, and we chat in front of the mailbox, he says some outrageously flattering things about my meat, and we go up to his place to call some friends, and then I start playing with him and he with me, and he takes off his trousers so I can suck on his cock, long and hardening, and then I strip but he barely touches me, so I suck and suck and suck, he talking all the while, saying how he'll love to fuck me, but he tries and I'm too tense and it's hurtful, so he stops, gets poppers, we continue to suck, I try doing myself by hand, finally he jerks off on me in a shower, and I manage to jerk myself off, we exchange numbers, I get the Times at 11:15, read part of it, decide I feel too tired to watch Pilobolus at 12, bed at 12:30.
DIARY 8728
SUNDAY, JULY 7. Up at 8:45, read the Times, work both puzzles, and the double-crostic has an interesting quote from "The Brain Revolution" by Ferguson: "Man, that whirlpool of electrons, responds to electricity, magnetic forces, to stray currents, extraterrestrial forces, all of which act on his brain, which controls all his functions." Watch Camera Three for a pop-modern old-time filmmaker named George Burckhardt, and then read EVERY article in the magazine, simply for something to do, then mix up some pancakes for lunch, which are truly awful, and then water the plants in both apartments by 3 pm, and Madge has called with spare tickets to Wushu, so I call people and end up getting (Jack Maynard) Arthur Seelye to come along, so I shower and wash my hair and type a diary page and do actually nothing ELSE during the day except the Times, and get out at 6:15 to get to the Felt Forum at 6:45, a large crowd and NO corner of 32nd and 8th, but Madge is there PREGNANT, due in September, and we're in to five or SIX checks of MY shoulder bag for weapons and cameras, but Madge's LARGER bag isn't checked at ALL. She passes out Haw Flakes during intermission, a kicky cranberry pellet that tastes good only when wet, and the program is repetitive after awhile, but very informative as to names of styles of fighting and "boxing" (see DIARY 8729). Out at 9:10, having paid $8 for the ticket and $2 for the program, subway up to 57th and walk across to the Festival for "Alice in Wonderland," and get in during the Tulgey Woods scene (the start of it, as it turns out), and it's the best part, and I get to se it twice. BEAUTIFUL guys seem to be sniffing each other out by going down to the john at the same time, but there's no real action that I can see. Azak (who had "people coming to dinner" so he couldn't go to the Wushu) is there with Joe-El Tanguey, and we chat for a few minutes, they try Haw Flakes (I'm suffering very liquid DIARRHEA through the day, probably from all the MILK and ICE CREAM last night?), and I subway home at 12:15, deciding to smoke and come, doing so limply, sadly, and then listen to "Question," having had an omelet and TWO glasses of cooling white wine for dinner, and get VERY sleepy and conk out in bed at 1:15 am.
DIARY 8731
MONDAY, JULY 8. Wake at 8:45 with a call from Arnie, who says that his last trip was a great success, and he wants to do lots of things around town before going back to Greece on July 18. I tell him about my writing "conquests" and he's happy for me, "It's nice to hear of someone else having good luck, it seems always to be me." Hang up from him about 9:30, and right away Bob Rosinek calls [oh, and Arnie and I had arranged to go to the baths this evening; he should call me after 6] and wants to come over this evening, so I suggest he come for dinner, I suggest the Chinese restaurant, and then think that I passed up a "chance" to go to Chinatown with Arnie because I wanted to eat the meat in my refrigerator (which I haven't even eaten by WEDNESDAY!). Then I call Bob Grossman, he gets that awful whine, and he calls me back, tells me about the great weekend that he had, but isn't interested in going to the Baths with Arnie and me, saying that if he needs to go to the baths after a long weekend at the Island, he needs help, and obviously he doesn't want to be known as someone who needs help! Then I type three pages to catch up with the diary, exercise, shower, and have lunch very late, and then determine to get down to work, so I do so at 2:25, but it's just so HOT that I stop at 3:10, not knowing WHAT to do, and I'M feeling so dragged out by the heat that I bring the fan into the bedroom and try to SLEEP from 3:15 to 5:15, but then drink some water and have a salt tablet and take my temperature and set the alarm for 5:00, and I can't sleep, just lay and think, lay and think, and then I'm up at 4:50, getting the apartment somewhat in order, and then shave and have a shower and brush my teeth until 5:20, when everything's ready, and then settle to work for only 15 minutes before Bob rings downstairs, comes up, and we start talking about my table of numbers, he gives me figures about the human brainwaves, I find that it coincides with the earth's diameter! And we talk about "Uri" and John Casarino calls with an invitation to a GROUP tonight, so I invite us and Arnie to it, we go to dinner at 7:20, having good shrimp in a special salt, and great pork on scallions in a hoi sin-like bean sauce, and get home at 8:50 to get a call from Arnie, he goes to John's and WE stay home, and then we sit and talk, sex, I bed at 1:15 (see DIARY 8732).
DIARY 8733
TUESDAY, JULY 9. Phone rings at 8:45, just as I'm becoming aware that I'm awake and feeling totally sexually contented for the first time in ages, and it's Avi, wanting to go to the beach in honor of his 35th birthday tomorrow, and I say I HAVE to work, but he coaxes me by reminding me that Riis Park is supposed to be nude, so I call Arnie and leave a message for him, then Bob Rosinek calls and we chat about how nice last night was, then root Bob Grossman out of bed and find that HE wants to go too, except that he wants Arnie to drive, so I phone Avi back and say that I'm going OVER to Arnie's, and find him walking to his doorway from the car that he just drove back from John Casarino's! They'd had a fabulous evening, both had stayed over while John went to work about 8, and he WAS willing to go to the beach after calling his office and saying he'd be in TOMORROW. So call Avi, who's pissed because "He called me at 8:30 and it's now after 10," and then call Bob, who'll both come to Arnie's, and I'm home to shave and wash my teeth and catch a quick breakfast and take off, leaving the living room the same shambles it was in from last night, after watering both sets of plants for the last time. To Arnie's at 11, relieved that Avi isn't there yet complaining, and he shows up at 11:15, and Bob right after, but Arnie starts serving iced coffee and ice water, and we keep on chatting, and finally leave at 12, everyone feeling fine, and into the car onto the highway at 12:07, and into Riis Park parking lot at 12:37, just half an hour, pretty good, and through families and not-so-VERY hot sand to the gay section below the old folk's home with nurses hanging out the window, and YES there are bare cocks and tits and even cunts on the beach, and so we spread out, and I sit down, as Avi later says, "Like Katherine Hepburn in Summertime" in my white trousers and white shirt and straw hat, and Bob smiled and said it's the first time he's seen me that I didn't look like I was going to a funeral. I'll have to wear my YELLOW outfit tonight! The beach was GREAT fun to watch (see DIARY 8734), and then about 4:15 I suggested we end up at Coney Island, and Arnie has to be home at 6, but Coney is great fun with Bob (see DIARY 8735), wearily onto subway at 9:30, home at 10:45, and I shower, drink too much water, and read part of "Ada" until I shut the light off to sleep under NO sheets and 90E heat at 12:45.
DIARY 8737
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10. Wake sweating from the heat at 8:45, and exercise and have breakfast and fix up the entire apartment from the shambles that were left from Monday night's tussle with Bob Rosinek, and then type 6 diary pages to come up to date. Call Avi in the morning to wish him a happy birthday, then get down to unemployment, picking up laundry and cash from the bank, and then put the rest of the stuff away, pick up the last of the mail for the two of us, and look through the Village Voice. Then decide to see "The Great Gatsby" so I start reading the book at 1:15 while I'm eating lunch, smoke, and get out to see it from 2 to 4:30 (see DIARY 8736). It's raining when I get out, so I stop for a slice of pizza until it about stops, then get home and get a call from Bryce, hoping to see me again. At least SOMEONE wants me, even if it IS my ass for fucking! Finish reading the book, and John gets back to pick up the mail. I have dinner of a very smelly steak left over from Saturday, and get out just before 8 to go to the West Side Discussion Group, and John's on his way out to the Village, so we go down together to the car and he finds he has his first ticket on his FIRST day back from vacation and out of the garage, and I feel sorry for him, but it's HIS car! He chats about the sadistic choreographer who has her people dancing on rocks, almost hoping they'll fall off, and jumping around very balletically in the soft sand, puffing and panting. Everyone on the Island is stoned in the afternoons and evening, he'd done the cooking for the four left in his pleasant house, and everyone came over to hear Stan's records. He chatted about some Malamute's fantastic body, how he'd like to see what they've done, leaving it up to Pat to pay his $100 expense to let him see it, and he lets me off at 7:50. I walk up to WSDG for a not-very-good meeting (see DIARY 8738), and then leave at 10:10 to walk across town to 10:20 to meet Bob in front of the Cinema Village for "A Very Natural Thing" (see DIARY 8739), and then we spend from 12 to 3:30 around the Village (see DIARY 8740), and I'm VERY tired home on the subway to get to bed with only the SLIGHTEST, easily quenched, desire to come at 3:45 am.
DIARY 8741
THURSDAY, JULY 11. Up about 9 (the phone ringing through my earplugs with Bob Rosinek with an out-of-body experience that we talk about till 10:15, though John wants to use the phone (see DIARY 8796)) sort of hung-over feeling, and don't even feel like eating BREAKFAST, so I sit down immediately with "The Wild Boys" by Burroughs, and his fantasies and constant orgasms and sheer COCK-STRAIN turn me on, so when I read half of it I pause and jerk off with great pleasure, then finish reading the book by the time it's time to have lunch. Over to John's at 12, and talk through to 1 about his time on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and he's got an appointment with someone to talk about bringing out the "Best of 'Etude'" which he studied when he was a piano student as a kid, which might give him $3000 to let him last until December, and then he's got the opportunity to write a chapter of a music book for Joan Wiener Brown who works for, of all places, LATHAM, though HIS address is 310 Madison and mine is 30 E. 42nd, but they're the SAME place! Over at 1 to pick up the index that Charlotte Rosenburg is sending over from Harper and Row, and it seems that I always HAVE to have some work hanging in the background or I can't REALLY say no, except that I know indexing is quite automatic and is done very quickly for a high profit, so it's hard to turn down. And when the package comes, she has special index typing paper AND says that she'll send a messenger to pick it UP on Monday, the 22nd, what more can one hope for??? Then STILL don't feel like working, quite AMAZED by my seeming ability to find infinite things to do BESIDE what I have to do (see DIARY 8742), and that contributed to a terrible feeling of nonproductivity which seemingly ONLY a spate of WORKING can accomplish, and today I get the first inkling of the DETERMINATION to work which comes to fruition tomorrow (see DIARY 8743). But TODAY I sit down with "This Days Death," by Rechy, and it IS well written, intermingling his mother's "sickness" and dependence on him with his trial for NOT being sucked off in Griffith Park, and then he GETS sucked in Griffith Park so that "It WOULD be my fate, and not someone else's fate that I stumbled into." Odd, but it DOES work, and I'm AGAIN filled with the feeling of complete frustration that's hit me the past week (see DIARY 8744). John's over 4:10-5:10 to listen to his tapes, and he wants it! Dinner, then listen to music, smoke, come AGAIN, eat, and get to bed about 11:30, exhausted.
DIARY 8745
FRIDAY, JULY 12. Up at what's becoming a typical time, 8:45, after nine hours sleep makes me feel somewhat better than the less than six from the evening before, and 72 is a nice average. Decide to have a perfect day, so I exercise, shower and wash my hair, eat breakfast, water the plants, and then about 10:30 call Teller, who gives me the new dates for the hotels so I can NOW write back the GOOD dates to both places; call George Allen who said he was trying to get me all week (though I was home MOST of the time) and I was either out or on the phone, and arrange to see him at 3 pm to read the notes from the author, and he wants me to bring in Chapter One! I spend from 10:45 to 1:15 finishing making my revisions to my FIRST draft, hoping it looks more like a THIRD draft than anything else; then have lunch, phone Arnie who's going out of town for the whole weekend, phone Bob who doesn't feel like doing anything because he's got a paralysis of his face that's worrying him (this is actually in the EVENING), and I WASTE TIME until 2:25, when I'm down for the trip to 42nd and Madison, and the author's notes are in MANY cases wrong when he says I'M wrong, and George says he'll be cutting down some sections that HE thinks are overlong, and he smiles and says that when he showed it to Caroline, usually they complain about not having ENOUGH examples and I tend to give too MANY examples. Actually, when I question George, he DOESN'T want me to take it back and revise it, and I'm to give him three pieces of information and HE will retype it and I'll be finished, and he pays me $13 per page, willing to accept my 23 pages, and it comes out $299 (bargain day!). Then we look through Chapter One, with emphasis on the table, which he likes, though he thinks it's too advanced for the kids, and HE LIKES CHAPTER ONE, which is really only a rough draft, and he wants to xerox it and send it off to the author to see in THIS shape, so I'll have one quick rewrite and then a retyping and it'll be FINISHED, and he might let me up to $14, since it'll INCLUDE the author's comments ALREADY, and I'm feeling VERY good about it. Look through the new EB, quite fabulous, home at 6, call Bob Grossman and convince him to call a doctor friend so he won't WORRY about his facial paralysis, have dinner, call John Bryce, who's out, out for sunset from 8 to 9:30, call John, he's home, shower, over at 10, and have quite a SCENE till 12 (see DIARY 8747). Bed at 1 after eating!!!
DIARY 8754
SATURDAY, JULY 13. Up at the dot of 8:45, having to wash dishes before being able to eat, and get down to the diary with determination to do lots of work today to put in some work hours to make me feel as satisfied with work as yesterday. Talk to Avi and Bob Grossman on the phone, the latter terribly worried about the Bell's palsy he seems to have gotten from the roller coaster on the side of his face, and I look up EB to read him the paragraphs about it. Fertilize the planets (whew! WHAT a Freudian!) when I realize I'm a week behind AGAIN, and finish typing twelve pages of a more and more bulky diary. Send two letters out for Teller and a letter out to Interplanetary Noose, to get those two MAIN things off my mind, and look through the letter to send to Elaine, but then get tied up in astrology, getting out Pope's old reading and other readings, and checking to see if anything happened of note on the dates he PREDICTED something would happen, and I couldn't find anything of note. Sadly worked only 10 hours this week, which means that I'll have to work seven hours a day for every working day left in the month if I'm to make the month of July up to par. But I guess I'll HAVE to do it with the index and finishing chapter one and MAYBE EVEN getting to some of the other stuff that I have to do. Then shower and get out to the subway to get THREE slow ones to 34th Street and "The Conversation" with an old Gene Hackman leading a hideous private life and mishearing "He'd kill US if he got the chance" as "He'd KILL us if he got the chance," and the blood seeping out of the toilet was a true SIGHT, making the featuring of the toilet in the AD more sensible, too. Then we walk around trying to find a place to eat, but Maritime Cove is closing, and we walk south toward "Once Upon a Stove" and I look across to see the Sumptuary, which I tour and like, so I have the Eggs Torinese, good fried boiled eggs under crusts and parsley and spices for $1.25, veal ala Sumptuary, with a GREAT sauce over pretty poor veal for $6.50, and lemon mousse with a nice wine taste, and a Bordeaux Peigne (Yonne) for only $4.25, so my bill plus tip is $12, which is exactly what I have, so I still owe Bob $3 for the movie ticket. Home at 11:15 to watch a very SEXY (I'd forgotten how sexy) "Tales of Hoffman" on 13 with a tongue-tied Michel Molese and bed, drinking too much ice water, at 1 am.
DIARY 8765
SUNDAY, JULY 14. Up at 9:30, almost drugged from too much sleep, and get right to the New York Times in the heat, working through both puzzles in the morning, then having lunch and getting to work at last, doing four diary pages from 2 to 3, then write a letter to Elaine from 3 to 4, and somewhere during that time finish reading the book "Oriental Mythology" by Joseph Campbell, and sometime don't feel like doing anything STILL, so I sit down with a few chapters of "Ada" just to pass the time. Then watch TV from 4:30 to 5:30, "Time and the City" about the seven cities of the Apocalypse, narrated by an on-screen somewhat nervous Alexander Scourby, and later I get out the Turkey guidebook to check off the names of the places, and some of them look like places to see, particularly Goreme, which is the Cappadocian valley that has those fantastic mountain-carved apartments that were used in "Medea." When John borrows the Times this noon he tells me that John Bryce IS all I said he was, but refused to tell me anything about what went on, and I get internally angry with him. Then have dinner early because I'm very hungry, and work on the National Gay Task Force travel questionnaire and letter, getting very elaborate, between 7 and 9 (and maybe THAT'S when I ate?) and 10 and 11, and I'm still drinking too much water, haven't been exercising because it's been much too hot, and I've even taken to bringing the fan in with me from room to room where I'm working, just so there will be some circulation of air. Then around 11 Arnie calls me to say that he's been kicked out of the basement, and can I help him the next day, he wants to call me at 8:30 or 9 and we'll go to his place to move out, and I say yes, but I start drinking wine and get rather drunk, and maybe I listen to records or maybe I just continue reading until 1 am, but whatever it is, I don't get to bed very early, and I still haven't managed to perfect the system of keeping track of the number of hours that I've worked, and I'm still not into my self-discipline, though five hours of work is rather good for today, I'm aware when I TYPE this that I haven't worked NEARLY enough this week, and there's still a lot of PLAY left, too.
DIARY 8766
MONDAY, JULY 15. The EARLIEST part of the morning, and the dream, is on DIARY 8758, and I'm out at 8:55, slipped the rent under Mrs. Johnson's door, to see Arnie waving at me at his car, and we're down to find she's changed the lock on the door. There are so many sets of accusations flying back and forth it's hard to decide who's telling the truth and who's not, but whatever the reason, the Spartacus Bernstein Cheesecake Factory is going out of business (see DIARY 8767). Arnie decided that he didn't want to BREAK the window, wished he'd had a glass cutter so that he could get to the lock on the window, but the putty is soft and he gets out his tools and while people pass on the street, some looking down, some not, we chip away all the putty, pull the little nails, and gently ease out the glass and I crawl over and find that the SIDE door is locked with the padlock Arnie put there last NIGHT, and the back door is every MORE tightly wedged than it was when Arnie was in on Friday night. He crawls in and we take the door off its hinges and get into the hall, where thankfully the FRONT door can then be opened and we can move stuff out. After about an hour Tom comes in to give Arnie a check for $200 that he'd said would be $300, and keeps saying that he'll find a place for Arnie to open up his business again. Then Mrs. Ritz comes in, then goes out for a phone call, and before you can say "Help" there are two policemen in the doorway, who inform us that she can put us in jail for entering her property if she so chooses. I'm sitting there thinking about it, but she doesn't press charges, we continue to move out, Arnie's friend Sol comes to help with his car, I buy a roast beef sandwich and Arnie a Coke waiting for Sol to show up at 2:40, and we're down the highway and over the bridge and start the AWFUL moving of the stuff up four flights to his place. But Pope Hill invites us up after Michael and his girlfriend give us some wine, and THAT'S a very interesting time (see DIARY 8768), and then I'm over to Arnie's at 6, where we make arrangements to meet at 9 for the baths, and I'm home to shower and wash my hair and eat dinner, arguing bitterly with Eileen Robertson, then to the FANTASTIC Club Baths from 9 to 12:30 (see DIARY 8769), to King Wu from 1 to 2 with egg foo yung and roast pork, then VERY tired home and FALL exhausted into bed at 2:15.
DIARY 8772
TUESDAY, JULY 16. Avi gets me out of bed just before 9 with his call about going to the Bronx Zoo, and then a LOT of things happen (including my apologizing to Eileen Robertson, which was probably a good thing, and SHE apologized right back, too), and I scurry about and type up DIARY 8759-8762 about the Total Freak-out of sensory input I'd been exposed to, and get out at 11:10, getting the first subway, the wrong one, that comes into the station, and get to 72nd JUST after 11:30, just as Avi's running down the stairs to see if that's the train, but I wave him off, chat with him, and we catch the next train, he reads the four pages, not wanting to talk about Bob Rosinek at all, and we're to the stop that Avi catches as being for the Bronx Zoo, but I'd read Bronx Park E as Bronx Park East, NOT as the Bronx Park EXPRESSWAY as Avi knew it was. Find to our delight that the zoo is FREE on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which means it's full of kids, but we're in at 12:15, look through the Veldt, bring my map up to date, I have two hot dogs in the heat, with a 7-Up and a cold Milky Way for $11.50, too much, and then we're through the World of Darkness, with kids screaming, and we talk and laugh while seeing the penguins, the great apes, stop in the cafeteria for watermelon for him and pineapple and cottage cheese and soda and Drake's Cake for me for ANOTHER $1.50, watching a GREAT mustache with sunglasses over a tee-shirt and GREAT stuffed butterscotch jeans. Walk around to the extinct-in-nature animals, the elephants, birds, lakes, and birdhouse, and then we're both tired of walking and catch the Skyfari back for 504, disappointed that it doesn't allow us to see anything of the PARK, so the next time we'll have to look out over the CITY. Onto the steamy subway to read, getting to State Theater at 5 to buy two GOOD tickets for $5 for the ballet, back for him to nap and me to read, sneezing from the cat, Joe's in at 6:15, then out to dinner, while Avi fixes cold Shav and sour cream, good, toasted too-mayonnaisey tuna fish salad, and a salad that I made and wine that he likes and jello, and we're dashing out (my washed shirt not quite dry) to "Tales of Hoffman" at American Ballet Theater (see DIARY 8773) until 10:30, I walk him up to 72nd (oh, fruit sherbet chemically tasting before), home at 11:15 to look at the mess on my desk and get right to bed after water at 11:45.
DIARY 8774
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17. Up at 6:55 and jerk off and decide to get up by 7:45 to get down to the index, working on that from 7:45 to 9:15, when Bob Rosinek called and said that he'd been with Arnie, who called him on Tuesday when I was talking with him, and then I went to the store (at noon after going to unemployment, and following a cutie to a friend in front of the Finast, and then he slipped into his building across from the store without even looking back for me) (and I didn't cash my last food stamps for him---now $6 per hour for the wait, fine). Then Shelly called to say that I should be down at noon, so I called Gregory Dawson and made arrangements to meet him at 10:30 to give him the questionnaire, so that after I finished lunch, I started on THAT, and by the time I finished, it was time to wash myself and shave and get out to the movies that I wanted to see at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, after talking to Avi and saying that I had OTHER times to do my work, trying to get Bob, who told me when I called him this evening that he'd spent the day sunning and sexing on the Continental roof, and who said that he was feeling better, since people who's had it [Bell's palsy] had it WORSE than he, so now he's a bit cheered, just waiting for it to be gone. Get to the Cinema to buy at $10 discount book of 5, and it's just let out, quite a crowd, and I sit in the middle, no one cruising, and "The Music Room" is very sad about the old Raj of Kirtipur in his old castle losing his wife and child in a whirlpool, closing the music room, then opening it for one final dance and then riding his horse to his death just before dawn. "Days and Nights in the Forest" was even more striking with the four guys and three women in various combinations and the dying wife of the caretaker, and the sadness of almost everyone in the film was MOST striking. Out at 8 and have two slices of pizza in my old spot, then down to WSDG for an AWFUL evening, and I'll go one LAST time next week and then I really can't STAND it anymore (see DIARY 8775). Out at 9:50 and home at 10:20 to have dinner and talk to friends on the phone, and then it's 11, I read "Galaxy" for August to 12:30 and total fatigue, then get to bed, cursing that I STILL haven't worked.
DIARY 8777
THURSDAY, JULY 18. Up early then doze and have the dream described on DIARY 8763-8764, and out of bed at 8:20 and shower and wash my hair for my day out today, then type some of the total of 14 diary pages that I do today, and leave at 10 am to get to NGTF just after 10:30, looking like rain, and Greg is busy with phones and mail, but he looks over the questionnaires and says they look fine, though he'll change a couple of sentences in the letter" "Not take anything out, everything's fine, but emphasize some of the needs for money." So I'm out of there earlier than I expected, at 11, and get down to Ron Greenburg to find that he's tied up before noon, so I chat with Shelly who tells me that the girls ARE let go, and only he's holding down the office now, and the building has been sold to Togoland, so they'll have to move sometime before September. Noon comes and some pleasant people come in (see DIARY 8778) for another run-through of "Razz'm'Tazz," still a lot of fun, and out at 1:15 and get home, finding that the July Galaxy has left the newsstands yesterday. Lunch and prop up the leaning pot plants for the last time, finished at 3, and though I want to get to the index, I feel that I've got a lot of pages to catch up with, and find that I'm farther behind than I thought, and 14 is a large number, and ALREADY I find that I've gone through the 200-sheet pack of limp paper, and only 100 sheets will have gone to various drafts and carbons, leaving only 100 sheets for diary typing. LOTS OF WORK! Then fuss around the apartment making it acceptable for Bob's evening here, and I phone Bob Grossman who tells me that the machine that was meant to test his face was BROKEN, so he's had a wasted day, and I called Arnie after Bob called me to say that he was going to give his Ouija Board to Pope, and then I get in a scant 15 minutes on the index before Bob rings the bell, then John comes over to tell me to water his plants on Sunday as he's teaching at Bryn Mawr and visiting the Bowells in Ithaca, and Bob and I chat about his "non-erections" with Marty (the slender leather number in his place often) and Arnie, then over to see Pope for a long talk, to Promenade for dinner, then back here for sex (see DIARY 8779) from 9:30-11:30, and he leaves early, I have yogurt and water, and bed at 12.
DIARY 8782
FRIDAY, JULY 19. Up just before 8, exercising for a change, going fairly well, then shower and have breakfast and get the keys from John to water his plants on Sunday while he's away, and then settle down to type the five diary pages, including the DIARY 8781 of this morning's talk with Bob Rosinek about last night. Somehow that takes until lunchtime, and I have lunch and then settle down to do the HORRIBLE "Pyramids of Sacrifice" reading for the index, and I can't stand it by about 3:30, when I'm only 40% through, I'm just not concentrating on the words he's inventing and using, so I start typing the cards, getting 344 typed in an hour and a quarter, stopping to talk with Bob Grossman who calls to do something tomorrow, and he refuses to come to the "Pericles" in Central Park with me tonight, and I call the weather report a few times to see if it changes from the rain, but though it's cloudy and windy, it's only 20% chance of showers, so I decide to go. Work until 5:55, then have dinner and leave at 6:45, getting there at 7:30, and there's no trouble getting seats at all, since most of the two upper extreme-side sections are not filled, and the entire front row is empty. I read the reviews and then go in to watch the cute Puerto Rican shouting "Hey?" to the audience to get them laughing, and I'm concerned about how AGITATED I am by the people around me: the giggle of the too-young-acting woman next to me gets on my nerves, the gentle rustle of the $1 bag of fruit and nuts sold to the two women behind me gets on my nerves, the threat of rain makes me nervous, and I just seem to find infinite ways to be nervous. But it doesn't rain, the production is a tremendous one, and I've never cried so hard for a LONG time, tears literally splashing on my chest and I can hear sobs from the audience. Out at 10:30, walk down CPW to 72nd, past rather awful-looking cruisers, and then into the subway for a black who's VERY drunk, plucking at my shoulder-bag strap, and a cop comes on to usher him off at Chambers Street, he goes over to the local, and the cop on the local PUSHES him back onto the platform, so that he FALLS, and both trains go off, leaving a VERY angry drunk to face the next passengers on the platform. GREAT. Home at 11:15 and get right to bed at 11:30, with earplugs.
DIARY 8784
SATURDAY, JULY 20. Up at 7:30 and have breakfast, then get right down to the "Pyramids of Sacrifice" indexing, reading the rest of the 232 pages from 8:15 to 10:00, then type the final cards to 11:15, finding I have only 740 cards out of the needed 1100, so I underline and type the cards for the authors in the notes, for 114 more, and then work to 12:40 sorting them out, have lunch, and work from 1:25 to 5:45 doing the detail sort and trying to generate more cards for the list. But it's not going to be easy, and I'm getting a little exasperated with it, having to work harder than I thought on this stupid Sociology book. Then shower and talk to Bob about going to the "Pericles" in Central Park, and he agrees to meet me at 7:30, so I have some peanut butter and toast to hold me until dinner after, and then subway up, still reading a fascinating (though somewhat tacked-together) "Time Enough for Love," and buy a slice of pizza to have even MORE food, re-burning the roof of my mouth, and get to the corner at 7:30 to find him not there yet, but he arrives at 7:40 and we get to the box office to find no more tickets, "Wait at gate 1 or 4" and I go to gate 1, we wait for a few minutes and someone comes over to hand out seats, and WE GET TWO ON THE AISLE IN THE THIRD ROW OF THE LEFT-CENTER SECTION, just where I would have wanted to sit. FANTASTIC! The play is almost as effective the second time (see DIARY 8785), and we're out at 10:30, against his sputterings about walking in the park, to jaunt up to the castle and walk to 5th and 79th, then over to Third and 75th for dinner at the Country Cousin, he having the chopped steak and me the pork scaloppini, not bad but not great, and I give him the $3 I owe him (and he's triply thankful because he'd forgotten about it), and then we walk up to Harry's Back East, a very cluttered, rather smoky, and rather stand-offish bar that I look at for about an hour, and then I get tired of blinking against the smoke and looking at the pretty men who don't look back at me, so I leave about 12:30. Tired enough to put in the earplugs and get right to sleep, not noticing any difference from my head pointing NORTH per the orders and help of Bob Rosinek on Thursday.
DIARY 8786
SUNDAY, JULY 21. Up at 8:30, rather weary, and didn't even have a bowl to eat breakfast out of, so I had some toast and got back to the index from 9:25 to 1:30, having checked through the TV schedule to see what was on this week; then stopped for lunch and continued working from 2:40 until 6:25, when I decided that I was far enough along (having only to TYPE) to go to the movie this afternoon (evening, rather), and I watched the last half of "The Italians" narrated by a self-satisfied Luigi Barzini from his book, and knew that they were broadcasting the Jose Molina Bailles Espanol tomorrow. I gobbled down some dinner and got out early, thinking it would be crowded, just before 8 getting to the theater to find that there's a sign saying that the 8:10 show has been postponed until 9 because of the size of the crowd, so I presented my ticket and was told I could go down to the coffee shop, where the usher said there were NO seats left. I sat and read until a single woman walked out, and I asked her where she had been sitting, and got into the theater to find at LEAST a dozen empty seats in the place: full of SHIT. "Der Rosenkavalier" is a fat-hipped Sena Jurinac, the Marshallin is the still-very-pretty Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Ochs is Otto Edelman, Sophie is Anneliese Rothenberger, and Faninal is a very short Erich Kunz. When I see the start of the third act I'm VERY disappointed by the "Russian-red" color of the film with not a TOUCH of green and very little blue in it, but the music seems to be well done by von Karajan, looking very young, and some of the duets and trios for the women are truly spectacularly done, so that I can begin to see why it's so famous as an OPERA, though why it should be so famous as a film I'm not sure. The opulence of the Salzburg 1961 production is blinding, but the filming technique "originated" by Paul Czinner is terribly static, with a "zoom" of about a foot at a maximum, though quick cutting DOES manage to get most of the action in. But it's a dreadful bore with the staticness of it, and the intermissions HINDER rather than help in giving a sense of freedom. Out at 11:30, home to wash and feel sexy, so I smoke, take a popper, smoke, smoke a bidi, get VERY hard, and then come, then have popcorn while reading MORE of the Heinlein, getting to bed at 1:45, VERY tired, having to get up EARLY to start typing the index.
DIARY 8787
MONDAY, JULY 22. Up at 7:45, figuring that 6 hours sleep will have to be enough, and start typing away at 8:10. Finish with half of it, proofreading and all, by 10:30, so I'll be done at one, by 2 for sure, so I'm happy when Charlotte Rosenberg DOESN'T call, so that when I DO finish at 1 I can call HER and ask where the messenger is. He comes very quickly at 1:45, and that's ANOTHER job that's finished on time. The nursing index doesn't come in, but the manuscript from Latham comes back from retyping, and Chapter One is ALL messed up. Delay eating from 2 to 2:30 because Channel 13 is covering some live United Nations speechifying (VERY dull) about Cyprus, and then they put on the second half of the "Evening with Pops" with a VERY inexpert Jose Molina, and that's probably why I wasn't desperate to watch him. Finish with lunch and that at 3, put in one diary page to type, but just don't feel like doing it, phone Ed Lowman to make arrangements for Paul to visit him on Thursday night, and try calling a few pornography shops to get the Spartacus guide, but it's not to be had, so I can only take Paul around when he's here and let HIM evaluate how good they are on their Asian sections. Then sneak into John's apartment to borrow his big darning needles for sewing TWO buttons, one on each chair, and I put on some records while doing it. Glance through the Voice to see that the Elgin has something that might be interesting, call Bob by mistake during his 7 pm news, and he says he hasn't heard of them, so I decide not to go, so I have dinner late, after washing more dirty dishes for about an hour, listen to more records, debate coming, and about 10 decide that as a reward for working the 272 hours on the index in essentially three days (and billing for $12 per hour) I'd finish "Time Enough for Love," which seems to go very slowly, and I don't finish until 2:15, getting to bed after eating grapefruit VERY tired, determined to do a LOT of work tomorrow. I'd been thinking about the final interlude for Latham, and got out the Dewey Decimal system to jot down some notes, working for about an hour on it, and actually felt rather "worked" when I got to bed, and it's cool enough to enjoy a sheet over me. There seem to be new neighbors downstairs: there was music VERY loud much of the day, and banging and painting too.
DIARY 8789
TUESDAY, JULY 23. Up about 9:30, taking time for exercising and breakfast and putting things away, and then I type four pages of diary, and there must be something else that I worked on, but---well, yes, I checked the folder of "current calls" that I made up, and it was today that I tried to combine many things on many shelves into one "call list" and called Fran and the telephone company to talk a long time about various things, and called a few more people too to find them not in. Then have lunch and it's time to get to scouring the tub and sink and scrubbing the kitchen floor, and then vacuuming after dusting takes the rest of the day, and though I wanted to devote a separate page to the following, there's not enough to write about anything else, so it does go here. Try to get someone to go to the ballet with me, but no one will, so I have dinner early and get out at 6:45 to get there at 7:15, and am just getting on line for the ticket office when someone comes up behind me (I'd been standing behind him thinking he was on line, but then he moved away with an embarrassed grin) and asks "Are you buying a ticket at the box office?" I don't know what he means and say with some confusion "I HOPE to," and he stumbles around and says "Someone gave me two tickets and I was looking for someone to give the second one to; would you like it?" I ask where it is, dazzled, and find it's in the second row in the ORCHESTRA, and I'd come wanting to spend no more than $5 for a good seat, but had taken note of the fact that the Philharmonic was free in Central Park this evening in case I couldn't get in. "No charge," he said again when I asked how much he wanted, and then he walked away to say---I said, we'd meet inside and talk. Then I went to the side, flabbergasted so much that I actually felt tears of joy come to my eyes, and I couldn't figure what had caused THAT, but THIS is what will be on the next page (see DIARY 8790), since I've only given the FRAMEWORK for what my feelings were. Stand and look at the people, eyes glistening, then in to find the ballets are GREAT (see DIARY 8791), and out at 11 to come home, tired, and get right to bed without coming, saving myself for Paul's "coming" tomorrow some time.
DIARY 8792
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24. Up late and wash dishes for a long time, then out to unemployment and buy groceries, showering and shaving for his arrival, and talking to a few people on the telephone, except that Bob Rosinek and I don't talk at all this week. I start out looking through some of the stories I haven't read yet about life on other planets, and he arrives about 3, having called from LaGuardia and being told by me to take a cab, and it was more like $7 than the $5 I thought it would be, but it was convenient for him nevertheless. He loves the apartment, settles in with his luggage, and we sit down to talk about what he thinks about Tokyo, which is very negative, saying that he's nothing but frustrated about how they'll say "Yes" and mean "No," will call up 5 minutes before an appointment and cancel it, but then might call three months later for the first call after a meeting in the baths. He extols the physical characteristics of the younger generation of Japanese, then moans that the fat old foreigners get all the beauties that don't spend hours parading before the mirrors and then go home alone. He doesn't have anyone solid yet, everyone in Japan had warned him that he wouldn't like it, so that a few weeks ago he began coming down with the shakes in the morning and a deep sense of depression and frustration which this trip will help cure. He'll be going up to the Cape to see his mother with his brother on Friday or Saturday, then will be going to Paris on Wednesday, then maybe to Tangiers with a friend of a friend, and then to Cairo, Bombay, and Bangkok before going back to Tokyo for the start of the school year in September. We talk to 6, I phone a few places to check on a gay guide, find that Oscar Wilde has moved, so we're down to there to find the Falcon is no good, down to the Surma for a lousy Indian dinner that I'm sorry we suggested we have, back up to the Studio for him to shop for straight and gay porno, but he doesn't like it, then to the Pleasure Chest for nothing again, up to WSDG (see DIARY 8793), out at 10 to meet John at the Warehouse, cruise there a bit, up to Tys for awhile, not buying, only sharing his beer, and then home, both tired, at 11:30 and to bed with a kiss.
DIARY 8794
THURSDAY, JULY 25. Wake about 6, and at 6:30 Paul's up too and we roll toward each other and he swings around to 69, quite soft, and I keep forgetting how SMALL he is. But he's still good with the mouth (despite the fact that he had been forced toward a purely anal means of satisfaction in the countries he'd lived in), and I come without too much difficulty, then dredge up the vibrator and manage to get him up and coming. Out of bed about 7:30 and we talk some more, then have breakfast of hot rolls and coffee, and we start deciding what to do. I've gotten the writings in from Trans-World publications and write my comments on the Semiconductors article, having spent about an hour reading them through when they came in on Tuesday(?) or Wednesday (!), taking about two hours while Paul goes through his planning, and about 11:45 we're off to the bank for him to open a checking account with a huge check from selling something, but then he has to get bank checks for sending off his travel journal to Meredith as I'd recommended he do, and sending for return-address labels from my company. Then we subway into midtown where I can't find the Middle Eastern restaurant that opened near ACC, and we wander and can't decide, but on the way to Lou G. Siegals I come across the Beirut, and we eat there, not good, but at least better than Surma last night, and then we're back to the Pierrepont Morgan Library, which he's bored with, reading while I look at the manuscripts, then to the house, which he's impressed with, and out to let him do some shopping for hand-carry bags, shirts, and passport containers, while I pick up shower caps, and then we're up to the Park-Miller for "Tablets of Rama," pretty awful, but some of the activities were interesting (see DIARY 8795). Out at 6:40 and walk quickly across to the United Nations Plaza for Ed Lowman and lots of drinks and slow talking about Paul and his works with the handicapped and his new house on the east bank of the Hudson, and then down to the Steak Pub in the building for dinner, he pays for nice filet, and then back to drink while Paul dozes, we chat, he asks me to call him, we leave at 11, walk across to let Paul look at straight porno on 42nd St., and then home VERY tired at 12:30, and I watch the end of Cavett's interview of a snake-skinned costumed Nureyev, and bed exhausted at 1 am.
DIARY 8796
FRIDAY, JULY 26. Up about 7:30, having cereal and peaches for breakfast, and the gas man's come in to check the meter while Paul's sitting there, and tomorrow the EXTERMINATOR comes around (no, YESTERDAY gas man, TODAY exterminator), and the kitchen is thus so smelly that we eat in the living room. Paul's brother had phoned yesterday to say that his car hasn't been fixed yet, and today Paul calls Princeton and finds that he has to come down for an interview, so our plans are quite changed around, and he plans to get the noon train for a 2 pm appointment, and he'll be back to look at the Museum and then we're off to the baths tonight. I call Latham and he says I should come in for some rewriting, so I escort Paul to Penn Station and get there from 12 to 1, finding that he has to talk to Caroline before giving "Magic Show" back to me to be reworked, and giving me one of the chapters to be put together before I start working two days a week IN the office on rewriting at $8 per hour. I'm reluctant to do so, but I tell him about my possible trip with Paul (see DIARY 8797) and he's properly impressed and I figure I really start needing to pile up the money. Out and had seen "The Sting" at the Cine 42, and decide I'll be back at 3:30, plenty of time to see him back, and see it, and it's pretty good: the shooting of his "friend" the waitress who was going to kill HIM was a twist, and I'd THOUGHT that the FBI were phony at first, but decided it went on so LONG they were real, and then the fun at the end that they were phony was even BETTER because I'd started to SEE it. Great flick, with fabulous special effects in titles and long shots of old cities. Home at 4 to read the Voice and the Advocate that I'd picked up on Wednesday for the travel information, and Paul doesn't get back until 5:30, then calling and demanding I meet him in town, so I don't wash my hair, get out to Penn Station at 6:15 to recommend the San Remo restaurant, where we have a whole bottle of wine to prepare for the Club Baths, which we get to at 8:30, and it's fun and we leave at 11:30 (see DIARY 8798), subwaying back quickly and walk home in the drizzle, tired to bed.
DIARY 8799
SATURDAY, JULY 27. Paul seems to want to stay in bed, so I'm up and working before he gets up about 9, after his brother calls to say that he'll be even later and will call when he gets into town about 3. We have the rest of the rolls for breakfast and talk about my and John's breakup, my work, and his weariness with school children, and then decide to see the Metropolitan Museum f Art for the Chinese collection, after I'd called yesterday to find that both the Asia House and the China Institute had nothing doing at this time. Subway out, still reading the rather boring Jung "Collected Works" that I'm more determined than INTERESTED in getting through, and get to the museum at 12:30 and he suggests lunch right away, so we're back to the cafeteria line, which he wants to pay for, and the bill rings up to $9.40 with our two carafes of wine @ $1, my cold plate @ $2.25, with cake for dessert and Paul's various beverages and salads. A nice-skinned fellow sits down with us, after asking, and Paul and I keep talking perfectly gayly while he's there. Up at 2, out to look at the collection, I buy a guide that I've always wanted, and he likes some of the ware that he has some pieces of, we go through the rest of the collection rather quickly, there are some JEWELS of cute crotches there, and we're out at 2:45 ready for home. In at 3:30, with no message from John from Dick, so we're tired enough to nap, but I get up about 4:30 since I'm obviously not sleeping, going back to the papers, with nothing better to do, knowing that it'll be a pain to keep up with the diary after he leaves, and then Dick calls at 3:45 to say he's just getting onto the New Jersey Turnpike, so I figure he'll be here between 5:30 and 6, but Paul says somewhat later, stays in bed until 5:30, then packs and we chat the final things until 6:15, when Dick calls from the foot of the hill, and we pick up everything and walk down there, and I get back, feeling greatly relieved, at 6:30. Call Bob, who wanted to do something this evening, and I hear the impeachment proceedings coming from HIS room and from downstairs, so I put it on to hear the final few votes, hearing the 27-11 vote FOR the first article of impeachment! Then Pope calls, HE has my chart, brings it over at 8, Bob and I agree on "Boys, Boys, Boys," eat at Bilbaina, fairly good, and I get DRUNK on Sangria at the show (see DIARY 8800), home at 2, SOZZLED.
DIARY 8801
SUNDAY, JULY 28. Wake at 6, terribly horny, and jerk off with Baby Magic, leaving my cock somewhat sore and still rather stiff. Up again at 9, feeling quite dreadfully hung-over, and I try to get up to see what's on TV, but I have to go right back to bed when I find there's nothing on. Up again to look through Pope's astrological reading for me, and then back to bed, and the day is like that: rest until I get bored, and don't feel like throwing up, and then up until I DO feel like throwing up. No possibility of working at all, talk to Bob and tell him that I feel awful, and he says he didn't like the show at ALL, and I'm wondering whether my liking the show was worth the price I was paying. Have cereal about 11:30, feeling better with something in my stomach, then have some eggs about 3, after watering the plants, and then watch a half-hour TV special on Japan about Bugaku, cherry-bark carving, and gardens, and then have some steak to finish eating for today, feeling somewhat better, but I can't think of anything better to do than to watch TV for the rest of the evening, so I watch the start of the Evening at Pops, but then AGAIN during the day I find myself jerking off, so I'm worn out for more than one reason. Phone Avi and order some grass from his friends, then watch the end of Masterpiece Theater about Conan Doyle until 10, watch a half-hour of news, then watch my first "The Protectors" with Vaughan and Porter, tacky thing about a father stealing jewels that he has his daughter help ransom for the insurance, filmed around Kronberg Castle, so I can say I've seen it, then watch part of "Story of Three Loves" and the Moira Shearer ballet, then watch two hours of Howard Brown, Beatrice Smith, marvelous Leslie Noble, cute Rotherberg from Dignity, Innes the nurse and someone the NYU counselor that I'd met at the Gay Task Force, and they have some VERY good things to say, answer questions precisely, get good questions from Barbara Gittings from the audience and an awful sick gay harping at David Susskind, and it's all very good, but sadly only those who are CONVINCED that "Gay is OK" would be watching anyway, since they're probably convinced Susskind is a fag because of all the gay shows he has on. Tired to bed.
DIARY 8802
MONDAY, JULY 29. Up feeling better, breakfast and clean up the apartment from yesterday, do odds and ends, watch 10-11 end of "Last Voyage of Sinbad" and "The Blue Bird," and from 11 to 12:30 do some work on the "Tania" index, influence Bob Grossman that he wants to see the two films, and talked to Bob Rosinek for about an hour, and he wants to come over on Wednesday, he thinks. Exercise for the first time in ages, shower for Bob, and then he's in at 2, I mix up some GREAT tuna with salad dressing, parsley flakes, seasoning, and raisins for a GREAT salad with toast and melon, and we both like it, watch a bit of the impeachment hearings while I rush around watering the plants, and then we're out at 3:45 to see "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe," which is very reminiscent of Jacques Tati with the simplicity and yet the absurdity of the situations, though it's carried even farther into many killings, great pain for a few characters, and a marvelous department head with an apartment full of nude male torsos who loves to look out the window at the runners taking their shirts off, whom Bob doesn't get as being gay until I tell him. "Le Sex Shop" had gotten such GREAT reviews and it was really a bore: if you're gay and been to orgies, you're not going to look very favorably at a scene in a group with one guy fucking a gal, or people changing wives, or women kissing women, or people whose sex you're not quite sure of. Bob almost wants to leave before the end, but we stick through until about 7, then home to gather everything up and get around the corner to sit on the Promenade for a bit, and he says there ARE nice people there, then we're up to China Chili, owned by Uncle Chen who owns the Chuan Yuan, but we have MUCH better food, and we BOTH like it, and then I walk him to the subway with an ice cream in my hand, home at 10 to get out the porno and jerk off rather unpleasantly, and tune in the impeachment hearings JUST after the second vote, which they then replay, and I feel that I've kept up to date with it, devoting almost all of tomorrow to it. Eat lots of stuff while watching TV, dial for something to see, but there's nothing, so I shut off the set and crawl into bed about 12, rather sad with nothing to do, sorry about all the WORK I have, none of which I WANT to get into.
DIARY 8803
TUESDAY, JULY 30. Up for the last of the cereal, call to see if the gas man is coming and he is, call George Allen and say I'll be in tomorrow, and watch the second part of "The Blue Bird," this part in color, at last, and it IS lavish, but it's stupid that ABC is doing it in three parts AFTER other movies that come on at 9. Start typing on the diary pages that I missed when Paul was here, and end up having to do 14 to catch up, and tomorrow I can add up the pages I've done and add them to the list of hours I "worked" during this month. Almost NO time in there for correspondence at all, none since Elaine's letter of July 14, still sitting to be mailed. Bob Grossman calls to complain about a pain in his chest as aftereffect of his cortisone pills, groaning that there isn't any sun for him to sit in. Get involved in watching the impeachment hearings, and I HEARD the first article, on the Watergate cover-up, voted on 27-11 at 7 pm on Saturday, heard them replay last night on the 11:20 pm 28-10 decision on the second article, on the abuse of power, and watched from 11:30 and listened till 2:30 when they came in 21-17 on the Subpoena delay, but then the 4:45-6:25 debate on the Cambodia bombing lost 12-26, and I didn't even tune in at 8 for the tax evasion (yes I DID, for about an hour) debate, which also lost. Lunch of the tuna salad that I made for Bob, dinner of steak left over from last Wednesday's shopping, and I make up a new shopping list to get after unemployment tomorrow. End up doing NO work, though I'd intended to get to the rewriting for Latham when the impeachment debate was over at 10:45, except that Rolf Houkom called at 9:45, saying that he had no money and wanted to go to the baths, and I suggested that I wouldn't mind going to an off-bargain Club Baths night, and he said he didn't mind either, so I shaved and took my contacts and smoked a pipe and went outside to meet him in his car at about 10, and we got there in no time, with him racing around cars to get the lights, and we got in at 10:10, it was fairly crowded and I found LOTS of nice things (see DIARY 8804), but he was sad when we left at 1:50, saying he was tired and not quite satisfied. I got home and write DIARY 8805, getting to bed feeling elated about PERSONAL things and worried about PROFESSIONAL things.
DIARY 8811
WEDNESDAY, JULY 31. Up at 8:30, gingerly, since that means only about 6 hours of sleep, and drag myself to the Latham rewriting, and DO manage to get an idea about a tug-of-war which I type up in one page, but it's just not WORKING, and when I call George about 10 to say that I won't be in until 12, he asks if I really want to DO it, and I have to admit that I don't, so he just asks me to come in and drop it off, and I'm feeling so pleased and so guilty at the same time that I sit down to make a list of things that I don't like about the job (see DIARY 8812). Then out at 10:30 to do many of the things described in DIARY 8810, lots of things to do, and get to George's office at 12 to turn the stuff in and leave at 12:15, feeling VERY good that he seems thoroughly to accept my limitations in rewriting, but still likes my WRITING, and will even get the author to help in outlining Chapter One. And he wants me to work on the Science-fiction life interlude, too. Home at 1, buying groceries, and eat lunch in the kitchen that's fullest of dirty dishes that it's ever been, and then I type 8 pages to catch up on the diary, with a surprising 5 on the Club Baths from last night, and then I count the number of pages I've done during the month of July, and it's 110, or 22 hours of work at 5 pages per hour, which is almost a quarter of the productive work I've done during the month of July. Bob calls and says he's leaving from work at 6, and I work on the Tania index from 4:20 to 6:20, still figuring to be able to finish it by Friday as demanded. Bob arrives with a kiss and we talk about Seth again, and he describes the "other channel" that he hears: the slight sound of the record before the needle hits the recorded groove, and we talk until about 7:30, when we go to Dilqis to eat, and their chicken Georgia is still very good, and he can't eat NEARLY all his veal scaloppini, and I suggest a stroll on the Promenade and he says right out, "I want to get YOU into BED." So we come back, wash, move the speakers and fan into the bedroom, smoke, and get into it, quite stimulating (see DIARY 8813), and he leaves about 12:15 and I wash again and drink some more tomato juice, bloating my stomach, and bed.
DIARY 8814
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1. Up at 7:45 and have a quick breakfast and get right into the Tania index, working through until 2, feeling good about how well it's going, have lunch till 2:30, then back until 5:30, finishing expanding all the multi-entried people and done with everything except the final typing, which should take more than four hours tomorrow, finishing me well before the 4 pm "pouch" goes from Macmillan wherever it goes. Bob Grossman is unhappy that I'm seeing "Merry Wives of Windsor" with Avi instead of him, and I make the light remark that I'd ASKED him to go before, but he didn't, and I hope he takes the hint that things should be more what I want to do WHEN I want to do them if he wants to join me with them. He just delayed so MUCH the trip to the Bronx Zoo and the LIRR trip that eventually he might not get to go with me on ANY other trips with me. Even though I do realize that he's feeling poorly because of his Bell's palsy. Put on the hamburger at 5:45 just after watering the plants, then shower, eat from 6:10 to 6:25, and get to the subway and to the entrance to the play so quickly it's 7:05 and Avi doesn't get there until 7:10, with his friend Dale, the balding paunchy fellow who'd be cute if he just kept himself together. We wait around a bit for Arthur, but he doesn't show up, having thought he was to wait OUTSIDE the park, rather than inside. Something about Avi just irritates me, since everything I do seems to irritate HIM. I insist we go inside before our seats are lost, finally taking off by MYSELF before he follows. Then I say there's no smoking, which he refuses to believe until he's told by an usher. Then I want to move before HE wants to move, and he only STARTS to admit I might be right when we get the best remaining seats, and then says that JOE refuses to be told what to do. Then HE gets angry with the fellow sitting at our feet taking movies of the show, points to the item in the program prohibiting photography, and talks to the usher during the intermission. Doing so, his impatience defuses MINE, enabling me to tolerate it. Add to all this that "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is NOT a very good play (see DIARY 8815), and we're out at 11, walk to subway at 11:15, home at 12:15, drink more water, and fall into an overheated bed; seems we're having a HEAT WAVE again.
DIARY 8816
FRIDAY, AUGUST 2. Up again at 8 for breakfast and then finish the Tania index from 8:35 to 11:35, charging $240 for 500 lines, or almost 504 a line, so I hope she likes it well enough to PAY it. Prices should be going up in indexing, however, just as they are in everything else. John told me today that he's being SUED for his back rent that the Rent Control office says he doesn't owe, so that should be fun. And he wants me to water his plants again next week. Call Avi and find that the pot guy is out of town for a bit, call Bob Grossman and find he's out, and I have lunch and wash the dishes for the first time in ages (EVERYTHING is dirty!) and water the plants and settle down to type 5 pages of diary, and then spend the time to bring the page list up to date for the past year, and take off the calendar sheet for July, and there goes another month! Then file through to see what to do next, and the things for the New York Times hit so hard that I put away the LITTLE stuff that I could have gotten hung up on and get to work on the 4th through 9th travel ideas, rummaging back in the diaries and trip journals to see what I want to send, and I'm feeling VERY good about doing all that. Shave and shower after Bob calls at 4 to tell me with GREAT delight that he's gotten "half-price" tickets to "A Little Night Music," for his FIFTH and my first time, $13 tickets for $7.50 with the $1 service charge, hardly cheap, but it IS the fourth row, albeit way on the right side. Out at 6:15 to get to the Haymarket at 6:45, and it's not bad at all with lots of salad and bread and liver and onions and beer for all of $5, and we get to the theater in rain to see a very good show, but hardly one that I'd even care to see a SECOND time, let alone FIVE (see DIARY 8817). Fran Allison is in the audience, turning Bob's head, and he asks me TODAY if Mary Hartline's age is given in World Almanac, since "I used to bum rides on her yacht when I was a kid in Chicago." Some kid! Out at 11 and I force him to see what Hollywood and Turntable discos look like, and they're awfully sleazy and noisy and glittery, and he refuses to go in, laving me to get home alone at 12:15, I smoke the LAST joint of the old stuff and come with GREAT feeling till 1, then eat cookies and read a sci-fi story till 2, then bed.
DIARY 8818
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3. Earplugs permitted me to not hear, and the new shade-prop to keep out the sun permitted me not to see until 9 am, when I got up for breakfast, then worked on the editing of the outlines for the nine Times travel articles, and try calling India Government Tourist Office, but they're closed, and when I call Roerich, I talk to the Director, Mrs. Foster, and find that they're going through a CENTENNIAL of his birth, would like to talk to me after she gets back on September 2, and it gives me a great lever in getting THAT article into the Times. Then don't feel like doing anything more in the oppressive heat, so I watch a cartoon version of "Lost in Space," with Doctor Someone obviously patterned after some actor, and it's fast and thoughtless with their anode-cathode Tyrannos, their Throgs, and the almost sexless drawing of the crotches of the men. Then watch the beautiful Roy Thinnes in "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun," which the Dutton book gives the title of "Doppelganger" to, and jot down the idea of a REVERSED planet behind the sun as something to include in the article on science-fiction life on other plants for Latham. Then watch the end of "The Big Noise" with Laurel and Hardy, somewhat older and more uncomfortable to watch as they pant and sweat a bit too much in 1944, guarding a bomb, and at 4 I STILL don't feel like working, so I start through the Dutton book to take notes for the article, then thumb through the Heinlein books to get a list of pages on which he describes foreign creatures, and by that time it's 6:30 and I turn on "Seven Days to Noon" but they've replaced it with "Kiss the Blood off my Hands," which I watch for 15 minutes but can't get into it. Shower and wash my hair, make dinner of VERY smelly hamburger that I bought last WEDNESDAY (shudder), and watch "The Typists," life enwrapped in one day of typing the entire phone directory (a VERY neat ploy to show the passage of time), and Eli Wallach and Ann Jackson are pretty good and VERY sad. Then watch "Particular Men" from 9:30 to 11:30, with a BEAUTIFUL aged Stacy Keach as Robert Oppenheimer, and he DID get sucked in! Out to sit on the Promenade until 12:30, seeing not much, no one cruising me with fervor, and then buy the Times, look through the TV and start the puzzle, and get into a COMPLETELY COVERLESS bed at 2, one of the hottest nights of the year.
DIARY 8819
SUNDAY, AUGUST 4. Up at 9 to have breakfast, finish reading the paper and doing the puzzles, watching a rebroadcast of Twyla Tharp's "Bix Pieces" on Camera Three, and THIS is the one that she does to Haydn's quartets, among them "Deutschland Uber Alles." Have lunch and don't feel like doing anything, so I finish going through the Heinlein books to find what other-planet life he's postulated, and then make a list of the authors that I'll be using in my article. Type 2 pages of the diary and then watch "So Ends Our Night," "a must" per the TV reviewer, and Glenn Ford falls in love with Margaret Sullivan and Fredric March loses his wife and carries Erich von Stroheim to his death out a window while they both flee their deportation from various European countries as Jews. Then read more science-fiction, passing time until 9, when the National Geographic presents a program on Ethiopia, going into MANY different parts of the country for a very interesting program of what CAN be seen in such an unknown country: tribes, customs, the rock-hewn temples, and some lovely black bodies, and some mesa-top female-forbidden monasteries that look like PERFECT refuges for gay young men growing into bearded gray gay OLD men. Then I probably get myself very hot with the pornography and come, cursing the pot of my stomach which is getting greater and greater as I seem to be drinking more and more water during the heat, and I'm just too lazy lately to exercise, though I haven't been doing much work, either. Then I may have cursed myself for eating lots of things from peanuts to toast to cookies to beer to peanut butter to popcorn, piling up more weight on my drooping dorsal area. But I keep telling myself that I can arrest the downward turn and again get a bulky upper torso, but it's just a matter of DOING it. Avi says that he can get me some grass, but it's been delayed, and I see myself getting down to my last few poppers and no grass at all, and things are beginning to build up around me. May have worked on the Times travel outlines some today, my desk still a mess of maps and brochures. But with no immediate deadlines, there's no immediate pressure to work, and I'll even soon be out of things to READ. Bed early.
DIARY 8820
MONDAY, AUGUST 5. Wake about 7:30 and start putting away the incriminating evidence that I have a telephone: phone books and rolodex into the linen closet, wire down and across the hall to John's, and he's left me the keys outside his door TODAY, while I worried about it last evening, not even knowing where or when he's going, only knowing that I have to water his plants on Tuesday. Phone into drawer, which is lucky, because when the guy comes, he starts looking into ALL the closets to see where the wire came up before. Breakfast and then watch "One Heavenly Night," something that looks like it should have starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, about a maid who takes her lady's place, meets and falls in love with the prince, played crotchily by John Boles, and Leon Errol does some old burlesque numbers with dropping vases, pants, names, and dignity. That goes on until 11:30, and I even watch Abbott and Costello afterwards out of sheer inertia and inertness. Lunch, then get to the final editing of the outlines for the Times, and the drafts for the letter, and start typing it when the telephone man comes, pokes around, and finally says that I have to get him into 175 Hicks Street, where the terminal box is, and call for another appointment. I go over to try to throw the wire back myself, but can't make it, and Arnie calls and tells me the awful tales about his hard work when, in Dubrovnik, he finds that travel to Greece and Turkey is stopped because of their Cyprus war, and he takes complaining tourists to Majorca, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, but they still bitch and tip poorly, though he's worked almost every hour to make sure they have a good time. Get him over to catch the wire when I throw it back, we talk some more, Ron calls and accepts our going to "Great Adventure" tomorrow, and then Arnie invites me over to dinner, so I'm over at 7 after showering and shaving and finishing the 9-page letter, and Steve's there, and we have old wine, pork chops, chicken livers, both under orange bits, frozen peas and FRESH Jersey corn on the cob, then he talks on the phone, and we leave for the Club Baths about 9:30 (see DIARY 8821), back at 12:30, set alarm for 8:30.
DIARY 8822
TUESDAY, AUGUST 6. Wake at 7:30, thankfully, because THEN I'm up to shower and shave and eat breakfast and water the plants on the two sides, and don't even have time to check the schedule of the bus that should leave at 9:30, getting out at 8:45, none too soon, subway there, bus out through the suburbs of New Jersey, and it's cooler and more cloudy, so Ron can't bitch about being taken away from a nice beach day. Meet him at 10:20 and we get into his brown Grand Prix (he's not "dressed" today [up top] thankfully), and he accepts the idea of Great Adventure, says the Parkway is closed for construction, and we're off onto country roads and drive and drive, not really knowing how far away it is, and we're stopped at 11:30 at the end of what turns out to be the line. Into the gates at 12:50, he's bitchy, but not TOO much so, finding cute guys in cars who pass us and are passed by us to concentrate on, and I think the day at Great Adventure is a good one (see DIARY 8823), but he bitches most through the dinner at 10, and then we beat most of the crowd to the car, we drive out, he going a bit too fast for the narrow roads at night, and he finds a place that he knows, and I ask what his plans are: the pilot's home at the house, friends will be staying at the beach place, he surely doesn't want to come back to Brooklyn Heights, and then he says that we could stay at his father's house, which is a mess since the divorce proceedings started, but that his father's in New Hampshire for a week and we COULD stay there. Get there about 11:15 and he's packed a sheet and his pillow, so SOMETHING of the sort was on his mind, and I get a shower, having smelled myself during the latter part of the day, and try to kiss him in the hallway but he shrinks from the window in a facing bedroom, and when I get into the bedroom he's lying on the bed with his shorts on (chastity-belt style?), saying that he's VERY tired, and I try caressing him for awhile, running my hand up and down his arms and legs and back, and try to get into his shorts, but he doesn't cooperate at ALL, and when I ask if I should stop, he says "Yes" with definiteness, so I stop and lie under the whirring clock, not sleeping very well, reaching in the night for a blanket he's gotten for himself, and there's no go in the morning, either.
DIARY 8825
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7. Wake at 7, lay till 8, up at 8:30, be VERY nervous about someone coming: "It's a small chance, but the consequences are too horrible to think about." We chat about the possibilities of his coming out in the car on the way to Westfield at a Howard Johnson's where we have breakfast, I having my once-a-year pancakes which are too heavy and too sweet, which is why I have them only once a year, anyway they're cheap, and HE bought my dinner last night while I counted every penny, and I bought his breakfast, and then counted pennies and found that the 504 I'd given him for the Parkway last night was too much, so I borrowed 504 from him and just caught the 9:50 bus, losing my pen under his seat. Raining slightly all the way back through other suburbs, quite full bus, and into station at 10:55, dashing for the subway that got me home thankfully early at 11:20, and get right out for unemployment, not even taking the time to gather my washing together, only changing from wet sandals into shoes. Down and get taken by new fellow IMMEDIATELY, and BEFORE I'd been caught by Mrs. Johnson who showed me the filthy apartment on the ground floor (that she'd cleaned up) that the guy had left, and she tries to coax me into changing the lock on my door and switching refrigerators BACK with John, which I don't see the point of doing, but she's VERY adamant about it, saying it will have to come out of my security. Back at 11:45 and call Bob Grossman about going to "Flesh Gordon" tonight, then call Arnie who says it got AWFUL reviews, and I read Voice and IT gives it a 0 rating, and then Eddie calls at 2 and says we can see "Chinatown" free at 3:20, so I call Bob, telling him of changes, and eat lunch WHILE showering and shaving, brush teeth, out at 2:40, just getting there on time, and it's a confusing, slick, no-sympathy-for-anyone film with an almost sexy Jack Nicholson. Out at 5:30, walk down to Bob's, and Arnie calls to say that I should call Polly Brown for an interview on a South American cruise! She says 4 pm tomorrow's OK, Bob refused to see the Carnegie Hall Cinema, so I see "Day in the Country," tranquil thing about a picnic on the grass with the Parisian bourgeoisie, "Boudu Saved from Drowning" with an almost TOO-nutty Michel Simon (like Harpo Marx), and meet Bob at the Spaghetti Factory for a GREAT CLIMAX to a busy day (see DIARY 8826). Home to bed at 2:10, drunk.
DIARY 8827
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8. Up at 9, feeling the slightest bit hung over, have no breakfast because there's no cereal, start cleaning up the apartment from my great sweep of clothes-leaving off yesterday, talk to Avi about his roommate, saying that Steve should call him quickly so they can meet. I look through some of the books for lists of card games and other games, since Arnie doesn't like any of the lecture-type ideas that I'd jotted down to give Polly Brown during the intermission at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, and HE comes up with games: BLESS him! Listen to the news at 1, to hear that there's been an announcement about a speech from Nixon at 9, probably to resign, and again I hear JUST the news I wanted to hear when I tuned in only once through the day. Keep looking through EB for lists of card games, and watch reruns from the old "American Dream Machine" from 2 to 3, sadly missing about 15 minutes from the middle when they have difficulties, but during the CREDITS they play the end of the "Pig-singer" section, where the hippie eats him. Then shower and shave, not having time for my hair, and get out at 3:30, too late, and wander to get my resume xeroxed. In at 4:05, having caught the much faster Lexington Avenue line, and AGAIN she seems facile and likes me with SOME kind of reservation, and I probably make an ASS of myself saying that I know how to read palms, but it doesn't agree with the way SHE reads palms! See no children for any of the two girls, which I don't know how to talk around. Out and decide to see "Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob," rather fun, with Louis de Funes and a CUTE Slimane, possibly Claude Giraud or Renze Montignani. Talk to Richard and Eddie at 6:10, then home at 7 to see a note from Arnie, call him at Norma's, and I HAVE a job touring WITH Arnie through the Greek ISLANDS starting September 29! INCREDIBLE (see DIARY 8828). Eat dinner of sausage, reading through a lot of old Travel Agent magazines, and then watch Nixon's resignation from 9 pm into the evening, very sleepy, and then ABC says that they're canceling all its programs for the night for resignation coverage, so I decide Dick Cavett isn't going to be talking to Bette Davis, so I get to bed at 10:30, falling instantly asleep.
DIARY 8828
FRIDAY, AUGUST 9. Up at 7:30, have toast and the jelly that John brought me yesterday from "Dr. Warner," and Kathy calls in the morning to say that John's dictionary has been reviewed in the TIMES, with a good article, so I tell John to get ME a copy of it, too. Then Polly Brown calls just before 10 to tell me that what Arnie said was OK, and that my pay would be $18 per day, and I seem to be going off onto something NEW now! Sit down with determination to clear things off my desk, and write letters to two cockbooks, send a check to Azak and the Marijuana Test Kit and Con Edison, and call for a phone installation which has to be TUESDAY, and not Monday, after seeing the fellow on the street yesterday and saying it would be Monday, and getting John's OK, too. Call Avi and tell him I'm going to Greece, but he cuts the talk short because he's watching Jeopardy, saying that he had SEX with Steven last night, so things DO look OK, unless "something better comes along." Call Bob but he's gone off to the island for the weekend already, and Arnie's told me about him and Bob on Wednesday, so I haven't heard from Bob all week. Read a bit more, simply because there isn't anything that I feel like doing, and know that I'm falling behind in the diary but just don't seem to be able to get TO it. Read through lots of the New York Times and watch the swearing in of Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States after the first resignation of a President in history, and he has a speech of would-healing that literally brings tears to my eyes. Let's hope it DOES go well. No breakfast, just bacon sandwich for lunch, with cold grapefruit sections, and I'd even watched rest of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" and part of "Hodgepodge Lodge" because I had nothing better to do. THEN listen to Bill's TAPE from 2:10 to 6:30, feeling vaguely aroused with his tales of little Todd Snyder, so I smoke the NEW grass at 6:30, get VERY hard, ALMOST coming without touching, VERY hard and red, end at 7:10, and suddenly it's raining, there's a clap of thunder, and I think about the ballet, and think I'll TEST to see if my "mind over matter" is still working, and shave and dress quickly and get a subway to the LONG line at the box office at American Ballet Theater at 7:50, AND I GET A TICKET!!! (see DIARY 8829) Performances are good, out at 11, STUNNED with the evening and DAY (see DIARY 8830).