1976 3 of 8
DIARY 10842
FRIDAY, APRIL 2. Wake about 10 and then laze until 11:05, when I finally drag myself out of bed. Decide not to meditate in order to catch up on the diary before going away for the weekend, but there's so much to say about the previous week that I barely get everything done about Arnie's birthday party here and through Thelonious Monk before I STOP with 13 pages done. Also, BobG said he wanted to come over to type some more letters, saying he'd be over at 3, but he came over at 2 and typed all HIS letters until 4, so I had to go to the bank and do a few other things outside, locking him in and staying longer than I expected, taking the pots back to Rolf and finding him on the phone still talking about asbestos to his former boss in Boston, his little black box eating up the phone charges, and we chatted for a bit, and then I met John Woods on the street, saying I looked great in my new haircut, and then I didn't have enough time for MY typing. Then there wasn't enough time to shower and shave and get ready and packed, so I left late, about 6:10, rushing to the Lexington subway, finding one just left, getting to the information booth at 6:40, frantic at not seeing Dennis there, but HE was late, too, and we decided to buy our tickets on the train, surprised to find they were as much as $4.10. Pitch black as we rolled slowly north, and we talked about the last time he'd come down and the guy across the aisle "whipped it out" and he "whipped it out" and they had fun with themselves all the way down to New York, gleaming in the sun shafts. Into the familiar Poughkeepsie terminal about 8:50, up the stairs to meet a fat balding Richard Kleyn, and then for a long drive down unfamiliar streets to the suburb he lived in, into his boxy bare apartment with "what you'd find" in such places: hanging plants, cocktail-table art books, Pavarotti and Wunderlich on the hi-fi, decorated dining room one step removed from 2001, wall-to-wall carpeting in el-cheapo pattern, Snappy Tom cocktail mix, porno films (that Dennis was smart enough not to let me get into), and an electric-heated apartment that was MUCH too cold because of the expense, with supplementary heating in the bathrooms. Good steaks and peas for dinner, drinks and talking and listening to music until about 2 am, then into a weary bed.
DIARY 10843
SATURDAY, APRIL 3. Wake about 8, cuddle, good sex until Rick couldn't stand it any more and came in to put on his Fiedler album that started with Bach's G-String and ended up with Sousa marches. Coffee to get us out of bed, then shower and shave and dress and get out about noon to a restaurant called something like The Old Mill, presided over by graduates of the newly-arrived CIA (Culinary Institute of America), who took the place in a poor neighborhood and proceeded with interesting menu, fresh vegetables (asparagus, corn, and beans), and cheap prices ($20 for four of us, and I ate GOOD) to make it a success. Pleasant conversation with Bob someone, talking about tricks, Poughkeepsie living, food, cruising, sex, etc, and then out at 2 to drive down to Dick's Castle, a little-better-than-ruin that a Prussian former officer took over (to talk about countries "under the Russian heel") with the impossible dream of rebuilding it from a concrete frame to a marble palace. Lots of miniature militiamen and odd junk displays of dolls, minerals, woods, toys, battlements, stuff. Interesting for $1. Then down (or back up, I guess) to Boscobel, well worth $2 for a chatty guide for us three and another couple, beautiful amber and dark blue glassware, comments from eight-times-through Rick, who got a few NEW stories, and then she was nice enough to let Rick buy the potpourri that he wanted so badly. Wander the lawn, knowing where to get klieg lights, since the Sound and Light isn't going to be given this year. Then stop at a supermarket to pick up the rest of dinner, and home to "nap" from 6:30 to 8:30, and we BARELY close our eyes for 15 minutes when we smell the chicken roasting, the pea pods bubbling, and the ice cream melting for dessert. Then out to the Déjà vu at 11, after primping, and meet Jim and friend (to meet them one week later at Dennis's), gape at a BEAUTY of a blond, laugh and enjoy a "Slow Screw" of Sloe gin and orange juice, a beauty to the eye and taste and ear, and outside to get away from the NOISE and the platoons of straight couples doing the LA Shuffle, shuffling us off the floor, but Dennis AT LAST got to dance with me, and he loved it, loved it, and I thought it was fun enough, having smoked in the car, and glum Rick drove us back at 2, and we were tired enough to fall into bed and not NEED anything else to get to sleep.
DIARY 10844
SUNDAY, APRIL 4. Wake about 8, toss in sex until 10, when Richard turns on the radio to something VERY appropriate, but I forgot what it was, and then I think there's a shower in the downstairs bathroom when there isn't, so Dennis is late for a BEAUTIFUL dish of scrambled eggs made with MAYONNAISE since Rich keeps no milk in the house, and with added wheat germ (which makes his salads delicious) it's super good, even WITHOUT bread. [Tried apple juice and vodka the first night: ghastly; had apple juice straight a lot after that, since I wasn't drinking coffee.] Then dash in the car to some Methodist church to meet Bob, who's driving down to Manhattan for a fling, and he gives us a GREAT demonstration of the organ, swells, faggoto, stops, pre-programming, and Easter, Christmas, and trumpet bombast. Out about 12:30 and thank Rick for a great weekend, hoping to come back to eat at the CIA, and Bob tells about his wife, who knows, his lovers, his children, his job at IBM, Dennis's early life, and finally we're in the city in front of Dennis's at 3. Think about eating, but don't get a chance to, and out for the subway down to 50th and walk across to Saint Bartholomew's at 4 to sit on the side in poor seats, because "Verdi's Requiem" comes across VERY muddled, and the conductor insists on doing it EITHER very loud OR very quiet OR very simple OR very complex. Nothing between. Catch only brief glimpses of Guy and look longingly at a long-haired blond with a girl and VERY nicely-fitting gold corduroys over his shapely legs. Meet Stephen and his swinging new friend ("I wish WE would go dancing!") outside, then take off in a cab to the Liberty Cafe with Rhea and us. I have a poor omelet and a VERY tasty, VERY expensive hot fudge sundae with ONE scoop of ice cream for $1.65, and then we walk home, chatting, and manage to buy a Times (making my call to Pope to save me one, making HIM go out and BUY one, unnecessary, sadly, but he was nice enough to DO it), which we read through the rest of the evening, and I finish the puzzle right there, complaining about the 26 of 155 words that are GARBAGE, and then we cuddle, don't smoke, probably don't even come, just talk and talk, maybe THIS night watching the candle burn lower and lower until I get tired and blow it out about 3 am. PEACE with DENNIS.
DIARY 10845
MONDAY, APRIL 5. Wake at 8 when the alarm goes, but we start cuddling and having sex, and I don't leave until about 9:45, getting in from 10:15 to 12:15, phoning Shelley to make sure what the address is, and then walk up for a tryout of "Play the Clock" (see DIARY 10846) at 12:30, then over to Record Hunter to find they have NO Reich recording, but pick up three Mahavishnu for about $8, or half price, and stop at Chock Full for a Big Chock at 2, stopping a John Hood who turns me cold even AFTER he recognizes me in my short hair, and back to work from 2:15 to 5:45, and it looks like the work will NEVER end, since I'm STILL rewriting. Back to water the plants and unpack my little suitcase and phone lots of people, decide I really don't need to watch "Five Easy Pieces" again on TV, talk to Paul about tomorrow at "Le Bellybutton," watch a bit of a VERY old Mae West, feeling herself up like a sack of potatoes on the Dick Cavett special, wincing at the close-ups of the "excited, laughing" faces of the awful male extras "adoring" la West. Do watch most of "Kind Hearts and Coronets," but am rather disappointed that it's very EASY to see Alec Guinness under all those disguises, and that I'd forgotten the hero (whoever it was) going FREE from the trial when he was accused of killing someone he DIDN'T kill, and laughing about "my memoires---my MEMOIRS" and flashing back to the diary he left IN jail about his OTHER murders. Then can't resist watching "Nightmare" with Kevin McCarthy still in his slender prime saying he killed someone, when he was just hypnotized into doing it, and his brother-in-law Edward G. Robinson helps trap the real killer in the mirrored room. Then probably continue eating, watching TV, moaning about how little I'm doing these days, fretting that Dennis isn't here, wondering when the hell I'm going to catch up on the diary pages I have to do, when NC work is going to end, and what time I'm going to get to bed after "Nightmare" is over at 1:30. Thumping woman upstairs reminded me how nice it was to live all those evenings WITHOUT her, and about this time in the spring the CATS start yowling outside, and the dogs are barking, and things aren't happy HERE without someone to BE here with, I sadly guess.
DIARY 10847
TUESDAY, APRIL 6. Up wearily at 8:30, to work at 9:45 to 1:45, and out for a VERY quick fish sandwich deluxe at Chock Full, and say that I work from 2 to 6, which is 8 hours, and I've been calling people all day: Dennis had said that Wednesday would be good for Bellybutton, because Guy wanted to talk with him, but then they ate LAST night, and Guy wanted to make sure that he and Dennis could still have sex even though Dennis and I were having a great time, and I said he was being silly. BUT we could all go tonight, so I called Arnie (who had to go to sex information, and couldn't go) and BobG and a few other people and then called Paul and made arrangements for three for tonight. Then walked up to the Celestial Empire, which I'd gotten all messed up, calling it the Celestial PALACE and saying it was to the WEST of the Xotchitl rather than to the EAST of it. BobG was inside already at 6:30, and Dennis was late. We ordered the egg foo young of chicken, which was VERY bland, and the special beef Szechwan style was the best, while the pork and something was rather poor, and here AGAIN I had the idea that what Stephen and I enjoyed so much a few weeks before had suddenly become rather poor, even though it was nice for the three of us to eat for as little as $12 and change. Conversation was rather stilted because we were with Bob, and Dennis and I kept holding hands and smiling at each other and touching knees, which wouldn't have made him feel better anyway. Then out just before 8 to get down to the Diplomat and to the most awful production I ever saw of anything anywhere, "Le Bellybutton," with Marilyn Chambers, and Paul sat us at a $12-seat table just three tables from the front with Tony and José, the two guys from his building, and we gaped in amazement at the poorness of the thing for the hour and 45 minutes of its duration (see DIARY 10848). Out at 9:45 to watch the limos fill with the "lights" that were in the audience, and Dennis MUST go home, having no pants with him to wear, so I decide to go along with him, and we talk again, drinking some Triple Sec in orange juice, finally finding SOME way to get rid of it, since he doesn't care for it, and we get to bed about 2 am again.
DIARY 10849
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7. The phone rings at 7:10, but he'd given it to the Answer Service and had forgotten to disconnect it, so though we WENT to his place so he'd HAVE a pair of pants in case he got the job, he didn't get the job though it was OFFERED to him. But we had great sex anyway, and I didn't get to work until 10:30, probably taking this morning to stop in a coffee shop near 6th to have a breakfast special WITHOUT coffee, and with moldy home fries, and worked until 2:15, typing up the final pages of my Student Orientation section of the manual---the largest original part of the whole thing---while talking to Ellen about Muktananda, and then decided I'd like the $2.10 beef and bloody mary special at the Burger and Brew, and the drink was TINY, but it still had its little sprig of celery, and the burger wasn't bad, but it didn't quite put the glow on the afternoon that I wanted. Back from 2:45 to 6:30, and AGAIN it was clear I wouldn't be done tomorrow, either, and the xerox machine started working more than full time. And I'd about HAD it with the Japanese Adler typewriters whose carbon ribbons never quite worked as they should have. Home to more messages on the phone, then Dennis comes over to watch Martha Graham and we sit around the TV set munching on the last of Norma's paté that Arnold gave me at Pope's on LAST Tuesday, and Dennis isn't very impressed with MG's style, saying "It doesn't look like much fun to DO," and I agree, but it's an interesting program (see DIARY 10850). That's quickly over at 10:30, and then I put on some of the Mahavishnu and HE doesn't like it either, and I start showing him the souvenirs in the cabinet, we drink, wine, talk and talk, and finally get into bed about 2 am, both feeling very tired, without coming! I feel as if I'd been cheating him a bit (particularly when he comes in at 8:30 and I have him sit and read something while I finish mailing out a couple of bills that I got into the middle of doing before he came---felt very guilty about that later, as if I were trying to make him NOT feel welcome on his rare visits here), but he talks later with pride about the idea that we could actually spend an evening together WITHOUT getting totally involved in sex!
DIARY 10851
THURSDAY, APRIL 8. He gets a call on the phone I put near the bed, at 7:10, and we neck, he reluctantly gets up, I make breakfast of eggs, but he dawdles while shaving and combing his hair so that it's 8 by the time he leaves, and he IN NO WAY is going to get up to Jerome Avenue by 8:30. I can't quite get ready, feeling lost after he's gone, and don't get to work until 10, work until 2 listening to the people packing together the boxes, xeroxing various things for Tom, worrying through the Challenge Chart which I buy at lunch from Sam Flax for EXTRAORDINARY prices: $1.20 for a sheet of paper 30x40, 50¢ for each flair pen, $1.75 for a cardboard mailing tube: $12.29 for 5 challenge charts! Stop at an Italian place for eggplant and Boston cream pie for $2 and change, back to work at 2:30 and work till 7 retyping pages, adding things to lists, xeroxing, typing and xeroxing and cutting apart tabs for the index tabs for the 10 teacher's manuals. Then have no time for dinner before rushing up Park, to the Commodore Hotel to find my name tag for the first of "The Body" seminars. I'd called Dennis through the day---wondering if he EVER got to work---and left a message for him and finally felt too tired to call him back. Red dot on the tag, and I'm depressed to find that Ann is STILL in the seminar, and sure enough she puts her hand up FIRST and speaks FIRST (see DIARY 10852). Poor Don Altschuler is way out of his depth, but I welcome the opportunity to see how the seminar series goes WITHOUT someone like Lou Epstein, the old showman himself, leading them. Get very pissed at the people talking behind me, and we almost get into a fight, but they do finally quiet down, and it's so IRONIC that the woman shared that she was trying to get her STUDENTS in school to keep quiet! EVERYONE GETS JUST EXACTLY WHAT THEY DESERVE!! (And I hear the stereo set UPSTAIRS just now when I'm bothering with MY TYPING!) Out at 10:30, walk wearily across to Times Square and get home to warm something up for dinner, eating, reading Scientific American, for the most part in the lovely issue about the Solar System from way back to September 1975 [which I finish TODAY!], and then get to bed for what I HOPE is my last day at work tomorrow.
DIARY 10854
FRIDAY, APRIL 9. Wake at 8 and have last of VERY souring milk in cereal and get to the office at 9:30 to find that Ellen's not in, the packers are working away, and Tom's getting the last few duplications ready for the last challenge sheets in the last manuals, and I hole punch and file them away for a long time. Busy doing the last things when Tom decides to send down for lunches for everyone, and I order a pastrami sandwich and a cherry pie which comes back cherry-rhubarb and huge, all for $2.25. But I still haven't gotten around to drawing up the Challenge Charts, and he asks me to come in on Monday to finish up those, and at about 4 he decides that there are so many things to be added and changed that the boxes won't be sent out today, they'll be sent out Monday. Heaven KNOWS what the original schedule demanded. The booby guy in the next office keeps asking how it's going, Bushy-brows comes past to see how things are doing, and even Mrs. Ames was helping out a bit last night. Leave at 5:30 and dash home to pick up the laundry, RIP the bottom out of the bag coming up the stairs there, and lug the stuff home like a muff. Then right back out to pick up groceries to replenish a sorely lacking refrigerator, and then am making a few phone calls, looking forward to an evening of catching up with the diary, when Rolf calls, says he was thinking of going to a movie, and it's 7:55 when he finds that the schedule says it starts at 8:10. I dash to get ready and he picks me up at 8:05, we dash over the bridge, roar up 6th, and then he turns RIGHT at 13th, having confused the theaters, and we're around the block and park on 12th and 7th and get into the movie late, but "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," is fun anyway, though I didn't expect the Indian chief to kill him in the end and make his own escape after moving the water fountain. With all the reviews, none mentioned this---and I don't see how Nurse Ratched could have gotten an Academy Award except the competition was shit. Rolf is even more depressed by it (problems of authority) and drives me up to Dennis's without coming in, at 11:30, and we cuddle and smoke and get to bed about 2, liking to be with each other, looking forward to his party tomorrow.
DIARY 10855
SATURDAY, APRIL 10. Wake about 9, he still driving for my throat, which gags up awful-smelling stuff as he goes all the way down, and I just CAN'T stand him all the way, so he gets hot, does the last few whacks with his fingers, and then stuffs himself down my throat with a groan and a cuddle. Out of bed about 11, have some breakfast, including lots of bread from his baking last night, and about 12:45 I figure I should get started with the shaving and showering. But we start cuddling by the sunlight streaming in his open door, he comes up, we get hot, and I end up getting him so excited he drags me over to the bed, puts his heels up on the wall, and comes into his mouth, and I cuddle and kiss and say I've never SEEN anything so great, and he's grinning like crazy, and I wonder about our RELUCTANCE to be so open with our INTENSEST feelings of self-love when coming (see DIARY 10856). By then it's 1:30, so all I have time to do is grab clothes and run, and I'm out feeling just GREAT at 1:35, but then the subway goes VERY slowly, and by the time I get to the theater at 2 I'm feeling AWFUL, quite a shift in attitudes (see DIARY 10857). No ticket for me, nobody, fret about holding the curtain, and they say they DO hold the curtain until 2:10, but my watch is about three minutes slow so I'm being bitchy without cause. Arnie comes in at 2:15, surprised that I hadn't met BobG, who's inside, and we're in for a disappointing "Streamers" (see DIARY 10858), and I end by talking with Maureen Duffy about Ann's dinner in just one week, while Arnie and BobG chat, and then we're down to the subway, now restored from its power failure in signals, and I'm home to look through the mail, John knocks and hands me about 15 pot seedlings, and call Rolf and arrange to get picked up at 8:05, and then find that "Star Trek" is a duplicate, and watch the rerun of "Space 1999" as they're turned into prehistoric people, and Barbara Bain REALLY overacts! Rolf arrives about 8:25, we're there at 9, actually the 4th and 5th persons there, so we're HARDLY late, and the trio of girls we saw looking at the NEXT building join us for a rather fun party (see DIARY 10859). Everyone leaves about 1, Rolf stays and chats, sadly coming down with a cold, then leaves about 2, and we wash dishes and chat and cuddle and get to sleep about 3, tired from a LONG day's activities.
DIARY 10860
SUNDAY, APRIL 11. Wake about 9, cuddle for a bit, but then we're interrupted by Dana's calling, saying he'll be here in an hour, and we're out of bed and looking decent by the time they arrive about 11:30, and we sit around the table and talk about this and that while Dennis prepares breakfast and we toast all kinds of bread and eat jelly and margarine---no, THIS time it's BUTTER by the spoonfuls. The circus starts at 1 so they leave about 11:45, after Dennis's mother and father had called and they'd chatted about THEM. Dana brought the Times, so I read it and do BOTH puzzles very quickly, and then I have nothing to do so I phone a few people, and Joan is feeling VERY depressed: working 3 days in an office, bills to pay, no man, no parts, not even enough courage to commit suicide, never be married, never have kids. Off from HER at 3:45, too late, and get down to 510 Broadway in the COLD weather (I'd worn light brown pants and the Indian shirt to Dennis's, thinking it would be hot in the crowded apartment, but he had the door open most of the evening and it was COLD most of the time!), and Arnie's at the Tibet Institute before me, drinking punch, and we have a reasonably interesting afternoon (see DIARY 10861) until we leave at the end of the movie at 7:15. I'd been thinking about walking over to the St. Marks for the two cartoons, but it was SO cold and windy (got down to about 30° that night) that I didn't want to walk that distance, so I rode the BMT with Arnie back here, getting warm. There's nothing to watch on TV, and I struggle with the feeling that I just want to smoke and jerk off, but decide I REALLY have to type more of the diary, so I manage to get off 12 pages that gets me PAST Thelonius Monk and TO March 31, so that I can FINALLY (but don't until tomorrow) put away the March calendar sheet and put up the April. That takes me until 11, and THEN I smoke and get out the porno and try to get myself aroused, but in the intricacies of feeling I go soft, so I get up and have cheese and bread and oranges and raisins and all kinds of food, feeling rather disgusted with myself, and when I should have gotten to bed early, I get to bed about 1:30, same as usual, leaving myself SLEEP as long as I want to: DAMN NC anyway!
DIARY 10862
MONDAY, APRIL 12. Wake at 8:45 with a jolt, out of bed, feel so stuffed from last night that I don't have ANY breakfast, and get to work at 10. Start on drawing the charts, and that finishes about 1, and then there's other xeroxing and filing of pages to do until 2, when I'm out for lunch to the Jay-Hind across from work on 30th, and their $1.75 lunch is GREAT in quantity and taste, except that adding the papad for 50¢ at the start and the gulab jamam for 75¢ at the end means the bill is $3.25 and I leave a 50¢ tip, so it's more than TWICE the price of the lunch at $3.75 that I actually SPEND, but even Ellen agrees that it's good. Talk with Don and Dennis and Arnold and BobG on the phone, to the disgust of Tom, and that IS the end of the work at 5:30, but they're still packing, talking about sending it out TOMORROW. I walk down to St. Marks by 5:55 for the "Heavy Traffic" and it's GREAT (see DIARY 10863), "Fritz the Cat" isn't nearly as good, and I sit through "Heavy Traffic" again, despite the incredible noisy crowd. Out at 10, still cold weather, across to the BMT to ride home, and this time I have dinner and smoke and DO come very nicely, but I'm soft. I just get to the point when it seems better to COME than not, and though it's a great come-down with MYSELF to find that I can't excite myself sufficiently to come while soft, the thoughts that creep through my head when I DON'T stop playing with myself are quite unpleasant: is this the beginning of the end? It's been better and better, now do I have to admit it may be getting worse and worse? If I fail this time, will it be worse next time? And so I just struggle through for the orgasm, whether it's by using the vibrator, the Baby Magic, or whatever. Then it's to the kitchen to gorge myself again, debating making popcorn, filling my stomach with junk that will last through the night, filling a place beneath my heart (how romantic!) that isn't filled with the presence of someone in bed beside me. And I'll do anything to get to the bottom of the page, anything to get to sleep without admitting to myself that I'm lonely, smoking and poppering and bidiing until I'm red in the face and short of breath and exhausted enough to collapse.
DIARY 10864
TUESDAY, APRIL 13. Wake at 8 with some noise from upstairs, and doze until 9, getting out of bed with some GREAT dream circling through my head, but it doesn't get anywhere because I demand to meditate first, and that produces so many thoughts that I race to the typewriter and type three pages about what came out of my meditation. Don't have time to exercise, though I know I need it [and will start, at last, on Thursday, at level 1]. Transplant the pot seedlings at last. Call Dennis and say that today's the day I want to see "Barry Lyndon," so I can't meet him at the Bleecker Street for "Antonia" (and I see that it's going to be on TV NEXT week, which is nice for Channel 13 and me). Talk to Arnie and he's got nothing better to do so he may join us, and I'd CALLED Arnie when I called Bob and his line was busy, giving rise to the FOLLOWING dynamite conversation: AB: "BobG, I think he just insulted you" (meaning if BobG was talking on the phone, he could ONLY be talking to AB). AB: "Come over for lunch." BG: "No." BZ: "You didn't ask ME for lunch." AB: "Oh, I have lots of things I have to do today: go to the bank ... " BZ: "HA, for BG you have time for lunch, for ME, not!" AB: "Oh, I only asked him because I knew he'd refuse." BZ: "And you ADMIT it with BG on the phone!" Later AB: "BZ, WILL you come to lunch?" BZ: "It's nice to make people feel guilty, then they invite you to lunch!" So I went over about 1:05, he made meatballs from about 6 ounces of meat for us two on a bed of rice, lettuce, with mousse for dessert, and he gave me TWO for Dennis and me for tonight when he's over for dinner! Out at 2 for "Barry Lyndon" after I smoked, which didn't help the film (see DIARY 10865). Out at 5, we all go to Arnie's so I can pick up my pipe, fish can, mousse; then I get to the post office to buy stamps (only Kennedy's since the philatelic window is closed) and pick up my package: tapes from Bill! Then buy 20 pounds of potting soil, chicken and sour cream and things for dessert, and get home by 6:15 to begin fixing up the apartment for Dennis's arrival. Many phone calls later, I put the chicken in late, Dennis arrives at 9:30, we cuddle, watch a rather inconsequential "Christina's World" on Channel 13, he eats TWO breasts and a leg, we have coffee, and then cuddle, smoke huge quantities of grass in the water pipe, and get into bed, but even with poppers and rubber bands we don't do anything, saving it for the morning after.
DIARY 10866
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14. Thankfully, he doesn't get a call. We wake about 8 and start cuddling, again he attacks my throat, but then he comes himself with gusto and he takes off after me, and I come with glee (gloriously gratuitously), and then we're still lying together and he starts playing with himself again and he comes AGAIN by kneeling over me and jerking off in my face, and I LOVE watching him and the lines of muscle between his arm and right tit, and we're cuddling in the aftermath of this orgasm when Joyce calls at 11, with a voice so youthful I don't recognize it at ALL, and I say that Art's asked me and Dennis to dinner on Friday, and won't she come over after her first "Be Here Now" session on Friday? Then call Art about 4 and he's talked with her and it's OK. Up about noon, I say it's too late for eggs, how about tuna salad, and he says fine, so I make some up, we have it with toast and butter, then have peach pie for dessert that I warm up to no good end, and he has coffee and me tea, and the dishes are REALLY piling up! Then he wants to go out for a walk, and we stroll along the Promenade, down the streets to the Fulton Ferry, where we look at the black-sanded surf and the Fire Museum, then he says he's never been on the Brooklyn Bridge, so we walk up there to about the middle (strangely empty, until Arnie tells me about the numerous muggings up there recently), basking in the warm sun, and then back to try to ring Arnie and Pope, neither of whom answer, and then back here to cuddle some more, and he finally leaves at 5 pm, and there goes the day! I don't feel like doing ANYTHING, not even putting away the water pipe which is smelling up the entire place. Watch "Dinah" with the stars of "Happy Days," including Don [Henry] Winkler. Watch a NEW "Star Trek" (55 by count, at LEAST) of "Mirror, Mirror," then just blindly sit through the Dick Van Dyke Show to 7:30, "The Last of the Wild" to 8, watch Flip Wilson and Gertrude spoofing the Olympics, starting with falls from Peggy Fleming and Tai Babilonia and some skier and some skater, then start a hilarious "St. Matthew's Passion" that WQXR somehow starts with one channel BEHIND the other, and the tenor sings an off-center duet with himself! But it fixes at 9:15, Arnie and Pope and BobG aren't home to get my message, and then I want to read, so I read "Subtleties of Nasruddin" in about an hour, finish "Between Time and Timbuktu" in about another, and finish "Second Skin" by 1, to begin reading "The House of the Solitary Maggot" and can FINALLY get to bed at 1:30 without smoking.
DIARY 10867
THURSDAY, APRIL 15. Up about 9, called Ann Berlin and reserved for Saturday dinner, meditate again, actually HOLD my breath for 3 minutes by 1) TM, 2) hyperventilate, 3) hold! Then DETERMINED to exercise and I DO it, only on level 1, but it feels good to be BACK to it, and then I KNOW I have to do my income tax today, so I start in on it after breakfast, going through till about 1:30, when I need a cashier's check for $595, since taking it out of my checking account would BREAK me, and I don't want that---also, I find that I don't have the NYS forms. Go to three banks, no forms; get the check; go to PO, try the Municipal Building; there, try the State building at 114 Livingston---no 114, try 144, not there, hit an Income Tax office and she kindly tells me that I'm looking for 141 Livingston, and there're the forms. I'm bitchy, but it doesn't do any good, and I come back to mope through the day, but FINALLY come to some sort of rationalization for paying my taxes (see DIARY 10869) and it feels better. Finish all the paperwork by 4:15, then out to find the times ripped off the nearest mailbox, so try the one on Pierrepont and Henry and find they pick up at 4:45, so THAT'S THAT! Back to have lunch, or whatever, of hamburger at 5, and then get engrossed in Sci Am and have orange and cookies at the end of it, feeling stuffed. Find that "Star Trek" is a duplicate, put lots of things away and get the apartment into a fairly good state (watched "Dinah" from 5 to 6 to see Desi Arnez and his son, cute, though not much of him, since Art wanted me to see what he looked like) before deciding that I just MUST get some of the diary pages typed, and I type 13 pages, just doing almost the whole first week of April, from the 1st to the 6th, not even HALF the stuff that I should have typed to keep up to date. But then it's 11 pm and I have to stop typing, put more stuff away, and then probably smoke and come with the vibrator, though I can't really remember, since I've come so many times with Dennis SINCE this date, since it's now the 26th and I'm just typing to finish out the page that's been sitting in this typewriter for EXACTLY 10 days, much too long, and it seems that I'll NEVER be caught up, particularly NOW that I have the first chapters of the Microbiology book sitting in front of me to WORK on---just no END to it all---save Death.
DIARY 10870
FRIDAY, APRIL 16. This is a perfect example of a day that I can't remember because there's 10 days between and the only thing I have on the calendar for the day is typing 13 pages and going to Art's for dinner at 8. Meditate and exercise, too. Other than that I can just remember momentary things: I'd again gone through all the stuff on the top of my desk so that I could remember what had to be added to typing of diary pages, and I might have gotten out a bit of mail and bills. Recall taking down garbage when I took down the rent check. Phoned Stephen Waite for a long talk, Daisy Roach about joining IBM (see DIARY 10877). Recall phoning Art to ask if he wanted anything, and he said no, then calling Dennis to tell him not to get there at 8 but at 8:30, but he didn't get the message and arrived at the door at EXACTLY the time I got there: 8:25. I watched "Star Trek" to see that it was a duplicate, thankful for the time, and took things along so that I could go to Dennis's that evening and be ready to go to Ann's the following evening for dinner, so I must have talked to Don during the day, too. But the dinner at Art's was great in that as soon as Dennis and I got settled with our drinks, in came Bob, Art's new friend, looking young and sexy and un-self confident, so that Dennis had to put him at his ease by saying that he had such sparkling eyes and a great smile (GOOD OLD DENNIS!), and then Robert Ripertello, or whoever, came in, looking not quite as cute but even SEXIER than his photograph, and I've known Art for 16 months and this is the first time I've met the charmer. Art lights up a joint and passes it around, making the evening mellower, and then there's a second just after the chili is served, with the wine, and then we just sit around and talk about all kinds of things like names, shows, living in New York, Art's house and business, and Joyce comes in about 11 to say how happy she is with est and we talk about that for a bit, and then we're in to watch SOMETHING on cable TV---oh, the blue movie, which really didn't get THAT blue, from 12 to 1, and Robert had to go home, Bob sat on the floor and Art necked with him while Dennis and I cuddled on the bed, and then we decided to leave, going up to Dennis's for more smoking and cuddling and probably sex and a very late time to bed, maybe 3 or 4 am, don't remember anything that set THIS evening different from any of the others.
DIARY 10871
SATURDAY, APRIL 17. Up whenever, more cuddle, more sex, though I recall saying we have to get through early for his parents' telephone call, and he reminds me that it's only Saturday. No exercise, obviously. So we can finish with sex, then I phone Don to say that I'll be over about noon, but I don't get there until about 12:45, since Dennis is being a little late getting out, and there was a lot of confusion with Guy: Dennis and Guy were going shopping for clothes, Don suggested the TFI, or something, on 5th and 18th, or thereabouts, and I suggested to Guy that we all go together, but then he calls back and tells Dennis "No," and we puzzle over it, until later Dennis finds out that Guy had a number of things he just wanted to do, and didn't want to take the chance of being sidetracked: he just wanted to spend the time with Dennis before he went to Virginia for a week. So I explained all that to Don, and we got into his car and drove down to the Village, passing the Empire Diner at 8th and 22nd, or wherever it is, and then stopped on Hudson between Perry and whatever and looked at a couple of shops, and it DID turn into a shopping day for him: people were supposed to hold things and underwear and other things for him to look at, and usually I waited outside watching the crowd pass by. Found another Sturgeon book, which was good, and then we went out on the pier, which was the high point of the afternoon (see DIARY 10972), and then were making our way back to the car, after he had a drink in Julius's, when he decided he wanted to see a porno movie before his dinner party overlooking the World Trade Center, and he grabbed a cab up 8th Avenue to 50th Street, where I'd recommended the show at the Adonis (and later Rolf verified that that was about the best thing I could have done), where I got off and walked the rest of the way up to Ann's, getting in at 6:05 to be the middle guest of the small evening, which was interesting enough but not VERY (see DIARY 10873). Called Dennis through the evening, up until 12:45, but when he didn't answer, I just went home when everyone left at 2, chatting with Steven in the subway, getting home too late to buy the Times, and drunk enough to crawl into bed without doing anything else.
DIARY 10874
SUNDAY, APRIL 18. Wake about 11, still feeling vaguely hung over. Camera Three is something different, and then I call Dennis to find that he has the Times there, and he asks me to come up, so I dress and shave and get up there about 1, not having eaten, and he makes omelets for us, and then it's such a nice day that we walk out along Dyckman Street to the river, sit along the rocky shore for a bit, and then walk into the park across the highway, cuddling in corners, kissing when no one's watching, enjoying the sights and smells and sounds of the early-spring in Northern Manhattan (see DIARY 10875). Smoke later, walk more, and end up the evening sitting in a rather idyllic setting overlooking the Spuyten Dybel Bridge and a green sweep of grass going down to the violet river, and then back to the apartment where he has to take the dogs out again. Then he makes dinner of chicken hearts, or something, and at 9 we watch the Tony Awards, interspersing that with trying to catch the spectacular parts of "Earthquake" after the initial earthquake has been missed. That goes on until 11:45 or thereabouts, and we might even have started watching something of the following feature, whatever it would have been, but we started cuddling, smoking, using the little popper that I'd brought up for him---but then I decided it wasn't very strong, and then he'd brought up the larger bottle that I'd brought for Don and then forgot (with the shirt and umbrella) to return to him YESTERDAY when I had the chance! But we no sooner finish one version of sex than the afterglow moves into a SECOND version of sex, and we probably didn't get to sleep until something like 3 am, with the dogs moving sleepily around us, the utter silence of the building broken only by the whishing of the air conditioner keeping the air fresh from dog-smells, and there's nothing to get up for in the morning, so there's no reason to go to sleep, and while we're both feeling each other's bodies there's absolutely no desire to let go, and this goes on for hour after hour, until I finally look at the digital clock and give a cry of dismay and we roll over and get to sleep at the end of ANOTHER wonderful day together with nothing but ourselves for pleasure.
DIARY 10876
MONDAY, APRIL 19. Wake maybe at 10, cuddle, murmur nothings, start to kiss slowly because of Dennis's lovely term: dragon mouth, probably come, and then get up to think about breakfast, putting bagels in to toast. Then we get involved about 12, shut off the oven, and get back into bed for another lovely session---not necessarily coming, but lovely all the same. Maybe get out of bed at 2, put the bagels back in the oven, then get involved again and shut them off again, laughing at the madness of it all, knowing that the dogs are fairly desperate to get out, but we can't keep our hands off each other. Out of bed definitively about 3:30, and this is the legendary day that we finally have breakfast about 4 pm. Dennis takes the dogs out and I lay around, totally stoned out on the affection that I'm getting from him, and I'd intended to leave today, but can't think of a single good reason to leave such a perfect setup. We're meticulously going through their frozen foods and having everything: dog's hearts, orange juice, bacon, eggs, vegetables, soups, cake, bread, cookies, and grenadine and gin and cranberry juice for drinks. It's been a beautiful day out, and we keep thinking we should go out, but we didn't go out at all: anytime I had a few spare moments I'd read through a few sections of the Sunday Times, but then we'd get involved again: in the living room, in the dining room, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the bedroom. I showered and shaved a few times, using his straight razor and discovering that I get a much closer shave this way, that lasts almost as long as the next shave without getting as scraggly as I feel when I've freshly used the ELECTRIC shaver. Look to see what's on TV, have dinner of something or other, sit around drinking and talking about all sorts of things, but he never really gets to the letter he wants to write to his parents, I never really read any of the books I've brought along to while away the time with, we're simply constantly together, feeling good about it, talking about sex and cocks and smoking and poppers, looking at each other, fondling, necking, nuzzling, kissing, getting hard and hot, and coming off for each other with blazing eyes and trembling cocks and hot bodies in the abnormally warm weather. Bed whenever.
DIARY 10878
TUESDAY, APRIL 20. Up again at some time, then get excited and he wants to smoke some more, or have some more poppers, or anything, and that wrecks the whole morning again, except that I recall we seem to be finished by 1 pm, much earlier than before, because he has things he has to do, and I have to get home to check on the mail and phone messages and water the plants, which really need it when I finally get there. There's a note form John that he might want one plant back and about Hemlock Hall, and I intend to bring the pictures from HH that the Griswolds sent to him AND the guide to the Cloisters, but I don't bring any of it, only more popper liquid and some of my own grass. Get 11 messages on the telephone, and spend a couple of hours calling those people and some others not on the list, and when it looks like I won't get back at 4:30, as I'd arranged, I tried calling his number and he doesn't answer, getting back late himself. I'm solidly on the phone the whole time, and then get back onto the subway, still greatly enjoying Updike's "A Month of Sundays" in the transit system, and get up to his place to find he hadn't been to the store, but we really don't need anything, so he makes dinner, takes the dogs out for their final walk, and we again get down to the serious matter of smoking and having sex and sniffing amyl. We talk about the dogs, about what Dana and Jody might be doing in Paris at this moment, about his tentative letter to his parents, about my travels and sexual experiences, about the joys of getting hard and oozing drips of clear fluid and hanging onto the final experience of orgasm as much as I can. The week has become totally blissful, despite the fact that I'm losing patience with Taffy's barking, Rhoda's constant need to be with us whatever we're doing: eating, preparing food, having sex, smoking---through she doesn't like being blown smoke into her face, which Dennis does when he wants to get rid of her, and we wonder how they're taking their new owners who seem to spend all their time everywhere but in the living room, where they're forbidden entry, except when Rhoda plants her hind feet on the lowest step and stretches into the room. More shooting sex, mostly self-administered, but glorious closeness for all that. Usually got to bed between 3 and 4 am.
DIARY 10879
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21. Wake again to the dogs prowling around and whining to be let out, snuggle with Dennis until he's awake, then cocks and sex and sucking and coming a number of times. I might take some time today thumbing through Cue and HBO news and Newsweek and the Village Voice which are all lying around, and again we probably planned to go into the park but never got there. Forgot that one of these evenings BobG called, Denis started giving him a dirty phone call, and for the next few days everyone tried to guess whether Bob actually CAME when Dennis egged him on, or whether he just put on an ACT that was so convincing that I could verify that what he did was what he DOES when he comes: Dennis though he came, he told Arnold he didn't, and he refused to answer my question "Did you lie to Dennis?" Talk to Arnie at various times, and I'd forgotten I'd talked to Stephen about coming to James Cunningham on Friday on Wednesday, respectively. Sometime we may have gone out for shopping for groceries, too, debating endlessly on what to have (actually, that was TONIGHT). Then out about 4:45, after endless delays, to subway down to Town Hall and meet Stephen outside, forgotten, and someone gives me a freebie, then Marcia Siegel offers me ANOTHER as I wait outside for Arnie. Performance is disappointing (see DIARY 10880), but it's over at precisely 6:45, letting us subway down on the 6th Avenue subway to 4th Street, eat in a noisy Adam and Eve's, TRIPLE burgers and beer for $2 and change, then stand in a long line for the NYU performance of Oscar Brown Jr and Blossom Dearie, marred by an incident where I wanted water (see DIARY 10881), and it's over at 10:30, we walk toward 7th Avenue subway and stop in a Village supermarket to get butter and stuff for groceries, and ride up watching an older guy (rather like Bob Malchie) with a HUGE cock in tight white jeans, and his cuter younger lover, and we keep staring at them until they get off, and there are other nice ones on the subway, and we put the stuff away and smoke and get into great sex and cuddling again and again, and only AFTER the lights go off do I fret about the dogs snoring and roaming around, the shortness of the comforter on the bed, the smell of the dogs on the sheets, and the thought of the "waste of time" isn't THAT strong.
DIARY 10882
THURSDAY, APRIL 22. [These days get GRINDINGLY difficult to do---they're so much ALIKE.] Though this is the morning Dennis whispers he'd like to try to fuck me, goes to get the Vaseline Intensive Care and lathers up my ass so leisurely that I think he must think that I think that's the worst part. Then he tries gently, I tell him finally to push a bit harder, and when he does, I'm imbued with a ring of pain and tension that just won't go away, and as much as I'd like to relax into it, I can't, so I tell him to get out, and we have sex with the Vaseline manually. Talk about it later and he's not turned off, and I'm pleased for the attempts and sad at the failure. Finally get things finished in time to get out at 3 and walk up through the park after a rain, enjoying walking arm-around-body through the vacant walks, and then to the top to check that the elevator's always running, that the flowers are in grand bloom, even the broom, and look at a tulip that I squeeze like the head of his cock, beautiful trees, and whole masses of plantings in brilliant reds, oranges, rusts, and whites that look brighter than the daylight. In for 50¢ and look through the place to see not much new, then out about 4, going down another way, and back for dinner and I get out at 6:30 for The Body #2 (see DIARY 10883). Back to his place at 11:15 and he hadn't had enough time for a dance class, just picked up the mail and looked at his apartment for awhile, and then we drank and smoked and cuddled and pushed the dogs away and came a few times (I'd expect that we SURELY came more than 15 times during the week, but probably not more than 20---at LEAST once most mornings, though the multiple mornings more than made up for the one or two we may have missed, and USUALLY more than once in the evening, to make up for the maybe ONE that I felt too tired---as this evening may have been---to do anything but cuddle; even the evening that I FELT tired but he got me into doing it ANYWAY; and the morning when HE wanted to come, but didn't, but got me so excited that I came when I hadn't intended to---through the maximum per day was only four, surely, and maybe that once only) and got to sleep instantly, gratified in stomach, eyes, cock, brain, lungs, and cuddled body.
DIARY 10885
FRIDAY, APRIL 23. Up fairly early and have sex in a fairly controlled way since I have to eat breakfast and get out by 11:30 to be sure to be on time to Ron Greenburg. But the subways come fast and connect nicely and I'm actually the first one there, at 12:22, and the session goes nicely and I'M the one that's avoided because I'm best (see DIARY 10886). Out at 1:15 and past the library trying to think of what I could look up there, but can't think of anything, and get home to water plants, listen to ANOTHER 11 messages on my service, and take a lot of time calling people on THAT. Gather all the mail and read that, then finish reading the last few pages of "A Month of Sundays," really a glibly brilliant book, and do absolutely NO typing in the diary, meditating, or exercising, which rather drives me up the wall, but there it is. Decide to see Jan Wodynski tonight, but their phone service isn't answering, and finally I call the other number and tell them about it. Then discover that I only have ONE TDF voucher left, and phone Michael, who hasn't gotten HIS yet. Leave about 7:15, having showered and shaved and NOT eaten, since BobG wants to eat afterwards, and there's hardly anybody there, and when the program comes on, it's obvious why everybody was staying away (see DIARY 10887). Thankfully it's over early, at 9:30, and Jeff's there waiting for something that goes on at 11:30, so he says he'll join us for dinner, and Art comes along too, so the five of us get out to the Maya Restaurant, on 8th Avenue below 19th Street, and there's a roaring party of about a dozen guys across from us, a few guitarists, and BobG and Jeff are talking away and Dennis is being sexy with EVERYONE, and the food isn't bad, but it's VERY expensive: the pumpkin soup was a flop, the avocado soup VERY good, but hardly worth $1.50, the beans weren't refried, the cider was mediocre for 50¢, and the portions weren't that great: I still felt nibbly at the end. At 11:15 we're standing on the street and Jeff decides to come to the Oasis with us, so we grab a Checker for the 5 of us and whiz off to 1st and 46th by 11:30, time enough for two free slow screws and various drinks. We dance a lot in the small back room, but at 12 the crowd thins out, BobG goes home with Jeff (!) after Art leaves, and then Dennis and I wander into our SECOND encounter with the straight world calling us gay (see DIARY 10888), then back to Dyckman for reluctant sex and bed about 3:30 am.
DIARY 10889
SATURDAY, APRIL 24. Wake about 10, out of bed about 12, leisurely breakfast, then Dennis wants to walk Rhoda along different parks, so we're out about 3 to wander along Dyckman Street, where he buys me a slice of pizza, we look into various windows and he says hello to various strangers, with the dog making all the baby's eyes go round and interested. Then back to the East River and a rotting park, but the buildings across are interesting, and then we cross to a hilly wooded section and continue south until the park gets actually beautiful around the base of the 181st Street Bridge. Kids have tumbled rusting railings down 40 feet, leaving a gaping danger point in front of wrecked park benches. Elaborate stone walls and railings and turns and tailored semi-spiral steps are quite beautiful, if it were only maintained. We agree it would make a dynamite sex park, since no one comes here except the graffiti artists. Up a tunnel, where we neck, then along various paths to 181st Street and walk along that looking in windows and remarking about the total absence of bookshops, looking at PR kids playing with themselves in their pockets, and Dennis said he ALWAYS did that. Walk up Audubon, seeing more places, buying half-and-half for his coffee, and finally get back, fairly weary, at 6. Prepare a quick heart dinner and get off to Steve Reich at Town Hall quite late, hoping that Arnie and Mike had gotten there early, but we meet them in the aisle and settle for seats at the back of the orchestra. The performance is a total smash (see DIARY 10890), and has the added goodness of getting out at 10:15, giving us enough time to get uptown at 11, but then Dennis insists on going for a Times in the rain, and we watch "Follies Bergere" from Las Vegas, with the "best entertainer in 1975 in Europe, Bobby Best," or someone who looks JUST like Ron Miller, so HE'S fun, but the SHOW is awful: none of the traditional set pieces, then the men only strip to shirtless tights, rather than to the tiniest G-string, and the secondary acts are pretty bad, so the ONLY thing it retains from Paris is the tits, and who needs 'em? That goes to 1, Dennis looking through the Times, me too, and then I SAY I'm tired, but he WANTS sex, and gets me into it, and we get to sleep AGAIN about 3:30, totally using all my grass and all but the last sprigs of his.
DIARY 10891
SUNDAY, APRIL 25. Up late, maybe even after sex twice, and while he's making breakfast with leftover rice from last night with an egg fried in butter, I'm down the hill to pick up $8.22 worth of groceries to get it SORT of back to where it was, and then back to sift through the paper to see what I want to take back with me. He's surely going to be late to the Brooklyn Academy at 2, since I get home at 2, leaving him on the subway, and I've forgotten to set MY clocks ahead, so when I set the alarm for 3:30 it actually rings at 4:30 (in the meantime I finished the VERY hard puzzle from last week, which I hadn't finished, and ALSO finished the two puzzles from THIS week), so I don't get to see the start of "The Ballad of Baby Doe," but the last two hours has most of the good music (and an incredibly inept intermission "interview" with Rudel, Hal Prince, and McGeorge Bundy), and then I settle into "Space 1999" with an incredible snow-planet that I'd only seen the end of before, where the guy who's immortal turns to shit when he leaves the planet. Then switch to "Challenge to be Free," another incredibly inept movie I watch from 7:30 to 8, but feel that it was awful enough that I can say I saw it, then watch "Behind the Mask" about the Dogons on the Tribal Eye, clipping out the schedule so that I can see THAT, then continue with Masterpiece Theater's "Sunset Song," a boring Irish thing about incest and a demanding father, at 10 watch "The Underground Movement," while talking to Rolf, who says he's feeling "not sexually aggressive," but doesn't want to come over for sex here. I take the chance and ask if he'll EVER come over (dropping the hint that I have new porno, which I THINK I have), and he says he will, sometime. So the door isn't closed, it just isn't open very far. Then BobG calls and we chat during more of it, so I really don't SEE it, and then we watch "Arabella" with a hilarious bit with Giancarlo Gianini as a fag, posing as one to get his father to give him more and more women. During the whole evening I'm smoking and trying vaguely to come, finally eating hash to have SOMETHING on my stomach, but it's just not working: I'm feeling too close to Dennis, though I would have gladly swung with Rolf, to have much to do with myself. Get to bed about 2:40, after listening to music, wanting to be near him.
DIARY 10892
MONDAY, APRIL 26. Up at 11:25, obviously needing the sleep, and immediately type DIARY 10868 about the dreams I had, but then meditate, and exercise for the first time in over a week (because of Dennis), and the phone starts ringing, I start calling people, and I start going through all the mail, including the fascinating piece about J.D. Salinger BEING Thomas Pyncheon from Soho Weekly News. Again I don't feel like eating all day, and I nibble on some cookies (finishing them) and then talk Pope into letting me come over this evening, so I have the last of the hash while watching a new "Star Trek" that I'd seen a BIT of before, where they're on a planet that's been modeled after Chicago in gangland era, and the only OTHER thing that I did all day was to type 5 diary pages, which gets me up until last Monday by the interesting dint of leaving the "extra" pages BLANK until I can catch up on the REGULAR pages. Over to Pope's at 7 and he's talking about all the work he should have been doing and hasn't been doing, and he's wanting to play me the "Living Love" tapes, which I didn't particularly want to hear, by Ken Keyes, Jr., and he shows me a couple of books by him. Then we play a game of Scrabble which he wins by 8 points out of 300+ for both of us, and listen to a tape that tends to turn me off, except that what he's "copied" from everyone is exactly that which everyone KNOWS to be true. Then stop to check that the "Third Testament" IS Tolstoy, which I'd heard already, and then we talk more and I leave to see "The Man in the White Suit" from 10 to 11:30, and it's not really as good as I remember: Guinness's style of acting seems dated and overdrawn, and Joan Greenwood doesn't really have that much to do, but the white suit DOES look good as it glows in the dark and totally repels dirt by being ONE MOLECULE---and AGAIN the ending is "What'll happen next?" as he looks at his notes and says THAT'S what caused it to disintegrate just as both labor AND management were preparing to tear him apart. Prepare for bed, then smoke and FORCE myself to come, but even THEN I don't feel like sleeping, so I pick up "A Touch of Strange" and read 100 pages of it from 12:30 to 2:20, cursing myself for getting to sleep so late, but that's a fact, and I doze off thinking of all the things I have to DO.
DIARY 10893
TUESDAY, APRIL 27. Wake at 10:30, thinking somehow I've only slept 6 hours, but when I'm meditating it comes clear to me that I've slept 8 hours, so I should feel better, so I do. Exercise for the second time, and then get down to more typing, taking time out to go down for the mail just BEFORE I realize that I have to go to the store to get groceries later today anyway. Spend more time simply gazing at the book list, rechecking my figures, taking off the book I bought last Saturday, adding the Nabokov short stories reviewed in the Sunday Times. Something also puts me in mind of "The Atlas of Men," and I re-compute my somatotype, just about what it was before, though more certain now. Get Dennis to phone me his birth information, and Pope computes that we're together 74% of the time physically and 64% of the time emotionally (and a lot less intellectually), so we're more compatible than average. When Dennis comes over later I find that he has the SAME somatotype as I have: 13.45 PRECISELY what I was at 28, which I suspect is an even GREATER coincidence. Finish typing 5 pages, which gets me up to last Thursday, literally within sight of finishing catching up to date, and then out at 4:30 for groceries, back to shave and shower and start on the dishes, but can't finish them by 6, so I finish during intermissions in another new "Star Trek," about highly advanced 100-armed beings from Andromeda who intend to take over the universe, but only take over our bodies and get taken up by the sensations and accept a peaceful settlement. Dennis rings just at 7, and we lie clothed on the sofa necking with NO trouble from 7 to 8, and then I make a daiquiri cocktail with Grenadine that I've just bought, but it's bitter, so I mix orange juice with it (canceling it out) and Dennis calls it a Zolnerzak. BobG calls to say the movie was lousy, we have dinner of greasy ham and I've lost my checked tablecloth! Lots of wine with dinner, so we're quite stoned, and then we smoke flowers; Rolf calls and chats a bit about his new job offer, which he's VERY concerned about, and we get onto the sofa with raga music and play around until he drops off to sleep about 11; I put his clothes away, do other things, wake him at 12:15 and we get into bed to cuddle before sleeping about 12:30, surprisingly early.
DIARY 10894
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28. I wake about 7:30, disgusted with the sounds of moving around upstairs until 8, then with the barking dog until 8:30, and around then Dennis wakes up and we start necking, feeling great until we both take our cocks in our hands and come with GREAT feeling, and then even get into it a second time before I drag us out of bed about 11 for French toast breakfast with orange juice and coffee for him and tea for me. Put all the dishes away, but with last night and this morning, it's time to WASH them again! We keep necking through the day, in the coolish apartment, but he doesn't want to come book-shopping with me, nor do we want to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens on such a cool day (56° at 1 pm), so I decide I really SHOULD get the diary pages off my mind so we can enjoy the Bronx Zoo tomorrow before Dana's for dinner, and HE has things he could do, so he leaves at 2 and I put a few things away, called IBM people (see DIARY 10877) and then get down to typing until about 5, when I pause to meditate and exercise for the third time in the three days since I've been back (not counting the wasted Sunday). Then expect to see a NEW "Star Trek" at 6, but it's a duplicate, and they REALLY don't follow the old order exactly. So I type on through and get to HERE at 6:35 pm, typing a special page on my special form of typing (see DIARY 10895). Get through six of the old pages for a grand total of 13 typed for the day, which makes me feel good, and then put on the ham and watch a good special on Orangutans by Survival Anglia Ltd., a name I've seen before, with a witty narration by Peter Ustinov, at 8, and then "All Over" by Edward Albee at 9 to 11 with Barbara Brimberg calling (see DIARY 10898), then "Mary Hartman" because I don't feel like going to bed, and when trying to come, reading, or just smoking and moping seem the only alternative, I watch "Blue Skies" from 11:30 to 1:45, a perfectly silly thing with Joan Caulfield marrying Bing Crosby, then separating because he insists on selling and buying nightclubs (REALLY!), and Fred Astaire dancing and narrating a radio broadcast that gets all THREE of them back together---and how's THAT for not letting ANYONE in a triangle get hurt? Smoke some to get to sleep, cleaned up a bit of the apartment, get to bed at 2:20 am, putting in earplugs because people upstairs are STILL moving around then!
DIARY 10899
THURSDAY, APRIL 29. Wake at 9:40, STILL feeling somewhat tired, and lay until 10:25, just over 8 hours in bed, then get up to soak my ear in peroxide again, making it feel better (and getting a twinge of pain from it as I sit typing, and then meditate at 11, waiting for Dennis's call about going to the zoo (and I really don't want to go, would rather finish my typing at LAST), and get to these pages by 11:55, before exercising. And SOMEWHERE in here I found the four ("Music at Night" by Huxley, Sturgeon's "Thunder and Roses" at the great Barqu, near Dennis's---but I guess this was tomorrow) books---but I just CAN'T remember---anyway, I seem to recall we should have gotten to Dana's at 6 so I could check what was on "Star Trek," but we didn't leave my place until 5:45, getting up there at 6:30, and there was a huge tray of tuna-mixed-with-onion-dip dip with fresh cauliflower, radishes, green peppers, celery, carrots, etc, and they played music for us, showed us programs from their trip to Paris and London, talked about it, made drinks for us, laughed and chatted, while Jody talked about his job at a hospital, though he's really trained as an audiologist but can't get a job anywhere, and he later changed into an intern's uniform that showed he had rather nice arms---and I'd meant to bring grass along as a house gift and forgot---when was it I bought the Columbian grass from Fred for $24 when he---TODAY, by my SALES LIST---so maybe today was the day Dennis came HERE about noon after picking up tickets at BAM, Fred bought 8 bottles on credit, Fred gave us discounts for the Barracks---THAT'S what happened! Then it's about 10:30, they have to work tomorrow, they show off all their rug weaving, and we're back to Dennis's to have sex and do something fabulous enough to get us to bed late enough to make this day fit into TOMORROW, which comes next.
DIARY 10901
FRIDAY, APRIL 30. Wake when we do and have sex lavishly until I ask what time it is, suddenly remembering that I have to be at the TV thing at 12:30, and it's 11:45! Bounce out of bed, don't recall bothering to shave or shower, and get out in time to pass Richard coming up the stairs at the dot of noon, and I whiz over to the subway, walk across to Park, and get there just at 12:30 in time to be a celebrity again this time (see DIARY 10902). Out about 1, shorter this time, walk down to Michael to give him my 12 West card that he wanted, call Dennis and we can't decide what to do so I insist that I want to do more book shopping, and he has things too, so he'll meet me at 3 at the Strand. I walk downtown in the rather warm weather, stop at the 23rd Street place and can't find a thing, then down to Barnes and Noble to find, to my surprise, two of the Vonnegut books that I've been looking for, and get TWO for the price of ONE, glad that I waited before getting them! Then stop in a few places along the way, get to the Strand about 2:40, look through the fiction section, finding nothing, and get a book by Ballard, not what I wanted, a Dahl I hadn't bargained for, and maybe something else that wasn't quite right but I wanted. Just about given up on Dennis by 3:45 and there he's strolling down the street as I debate leaving! We're over to Priapus, where we enjoy browsing, then down to check the place with the Blackwood rumor, looking into a few other places along the way, but I'm tired and hungry, so we're back to Dennis's, where he buys groceries and shows me Barqu, where I meet a GREAT guy, get a great Huxley "Music at Night" and a NEW Sturgeon, and copy the contents of two books totaling $32.50 to see if I WANT them. To Dennis's to eat something, probably hamburger, and then Richard comes over and we're late leaving so we grab a cab, talking very gay, up to Riverside Church to meet BobG who's there already, and AGAIN I've only brought two TDF forms when I need four---and part of this week was complaining to Michael about TDF, but I GOT them VERY quickly. Danscompany is really pretty good (see DIARY 10902A) and we walk back, Bob buying a sandwich to eat, Richard going off to where he's staying tonight, and we smoke while Bob eats, we eat, and then Bob leaves sometimes and TONIGHT we go to Jimmy Witherspoon.
DIARY 10903
SATURDAY, MAY 1. Mom's birthday, and I'd brought along an envelope, a check, and a sheet of paper [which VERY ironically is DIARY 10928, hadn't realized it before, the phone call TO Mom!!] to make sure to send it to her, but I just NEVER got around to it!! Got up VERY late from Jimmy Witherspoon, and it was something like 2 pm before we finally got around to breakfast, after having lovely sex for a number of hours, cuddly and pleasant. But then I had to LEAVE---Dennis spent the day with Richard (got TV last night) and I MAY have just come home, since I remember being depressed about forgetting about "La Traviata" on TV at 2, in which case I would have showered and shaved and watered the plants and caught up on mail, and maybe just read, but THAT'S what's so frustrating about typing so LATE! Anyway, somehow BACK to Dennis's, watch part of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" while smoking, watching Dennis make dinner of something, and then having to leave at 7:30 to get down to "Mummenshanz" at 8 at Alice Tully Hall, and it was a pleasant performance from our fourth-row dead-center seats (see DIARY 10904). Out about 10, downstairs to see the Book Fair closing up, and I get depressed looking at all the hopeful people trying to sell sheets of poetry for 10¢, newspapers given away free in the hopes of subscriptions, prices reduced, and I come across an order form for Aurobindo's book! Out and back to Dennis's to smoke some more, and I seem to recall being disappointed that I missed the Bee Gees on TV at 11, which implies that we stayed in TONIGHT and saw Jimmy Witherspoon LAST night, but, anyway, last night we subwayed down to the Other End for that (see DIARY 10905), preceded by a duet that sounded good because we were stoned, and we ended up very late leaving, after Dennis chatted with both of them, and then subwayed back to his place, and got to bed somewhat tired, very late, DENNIS is able to spread some memory on the subject, since I'M doing so badly with it all!
DIARY 10906
SUNDAY, MAY 2. Seems it MUST have been his place, because AGAIN we didn't leave on time, having to rush through breakfast, and I sort of remember egging him on as he gulped down a second cheeseburger, and I got off the subway at 2 pm, when he was supposed to have been seeing Laura Dean's "Song," and I didn't even check the TV listings to see that I could have seen "Dying" that I wanted to see before, repeated from 1-3 today. I probably just read the Times until 3:30, when Dennis rang my bell surprisingly early, saying that it was pretty much of a bore, having gotten in about 20 minutes late and the whole thing was an hour long, and he agreed that it probably would have been better with Steve Reich's music. I still had the grass lying there, so I suggested we smoke and then go out for a walk so we did, meeting Pope and John right outside, who recommended we take in the street fair down on Willow Place, and we moseyed down, feeling quite stoned, and Dennis ended the afternoon by listening to the entire spiel of a fairly attractive fellow we both decided was straight trying to sell him some raffle tickets for rather useless prizes: a liquor supply, gardening equipment, meals somewhere, etc. Then subway in to meet BobG and Arnie for Monty Python---no, we DIDN'T have dinner because after that awful performance (see DIARY 10907) we go across to 9th Avenue for Angelo's, and the pizza has a VERY thin crust that's not very good, but the sprightly redhead is still there, and I have a glass of sherry with the pizza that's not bad combination at all. Then back to my place to smoke again, probably, listen to more music, have sex again, unless this is one of the nights we get to necking on the sofa listening to some hypnotic music, and we both fall asleep out of physical and sexual fatigue, to wake up in a couple of minutes and trundle, sexless, off to bed to sleep stonedly.
DIARY 10908
MONDAY, MAY 3. I wake and doze a few times before he wakes, as is usual for me here, and then we sex again in the bright morning. Then he's to the typewriter to work on a letter to his parents about being gay, and I take the time to go through lots of the junk in the bedroom closet, finally deciding to throw out the facial sauna, the mirrored cylinder, the huge plastic wastebasket which is now ruined by the filing section that I put on the lowest shelf in the living room, for later use---small countries for travel!---and the wire basket that I've found no use for in the two years they've been stored there. Leave the carpet in a mess when I get to the books, since I've been buying so many new ones that I have to file the ones I've been reading, and decide to use the black-wire rack for sci-fi atop one of the bookcases in the living room, and that leaves me a whole SHELF as spare for expansion, needed because of the great number of bought books, and it feels good to do these things. We go through brunch and dinner before he goes out to a dance class in the evening, and just after he leaves Rolf calls to chat about his possible new job and I say I need some new bottles, so he brings over 20 and we talk from 8 to 11 about my working for him as a writer, he talking his ideas to me, me taking notes, and then he talks a "final draft" to me and to a tape recorder that I can use as reference when I'm typing the last draft. I quote an hourly rate of $15, which he balks at at first and then decides is a good rate, since I say I'll work fast (and since I get that ALREADY with OTHER jobs). Then Dennis returns and they start talking, and I have to shave and take a shower, rather hoping that Dennis will get Rolf undressed and into bed, but get out to find them still talking, and Rolf DOES hug and kiss Dennis even more than he does me, so there could be something going there. But Rolf leaves, Dennis and I have smoked, and we neck for a bit, and both of us may have come none, one, or two times, but I don't remember at this late date, and I didn't even get a chance to talk to Dennis to see what HE remembers of his far-off week to help me in the typing of these pages that I've left go much too long a time.
DIARY 10909
TUESDAY, MAY 4. We're up for sex, and it may be that he has breakfast and leaves early for whatever he has planned for the day. I'd put my binoculars into his bag at one point after Monty Python, and forgot to take it out when it was here, and as a result he carted it home with him and wasn't home during the day, so I couldn't tell him to bring them along to the ballet tonight, so I got out the OLD pair that I'd still kept, having to use a pliers to get the working eyepiece moving, and trying to get the nonworking eyepiece into a better position. Probably meditated and exercised, things that I do too seldom with Dennis around so much, though one of these days I made a list of things I wanted at his place and finally took a packet of Q-tips for my itchy inner ear, a three-way plug so we could have light AND coffee AND toast at the same time in his two-plug kitchen if we wanted, and a supply of my pills, along with a bigger bottle of popper juice since the smaller bottle didn't seem to be worth much (though Rolf said that if it went bad it SMELLED bad, but the strength could NOT just "go away" and that it WAS affected by mood and by how much we'd been using it). Then I congratulated myself by getting out the cord and putting up a hanging variation of the pure-green spider plant, which was spreading all over the floor, and it STILL has some ends on the floor. Sprayed the damn white bugs again, but they always seem to come back. Did more throwing away from the closet, but can't quite bring myself to throw away the tape recorder or the telephones. John doesn't want any of them; also, he's been asking about when and how long for Hemlock Hall, and sometime during the week I decide that I won't go at ALL, since neither Dennis nor BobG want to come with me---just as well for John, it seems, since he smiles and says "Good, then I can have the tower room for myself." [This actually on the 6th, when I meet him in the hall and ASK him when JUST at the time he's typed out a note for me, and the 7th, when I tell him I won't be going at ALL.] I don't feel like typing, except DIARY 10900, which I don't finish for some reason, so I read "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," most of which I remembered from the movie (good echo in here?). I'm out late to the ballet (checked for duplicate on "Star Trek" tonight) but get there on time for a poor evening (see DIARY 10910) and walk back to his place to smoke, cuddle, have sex, and get to sleep.
DIARY 10911
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5. Wake and sex and Dennis wants to have lunch with his friend and bedmate Donna and we find that the Barqu doesn't open till 1 and have lunch at expensive Irish Pavilion with mediocre lamb stew and an awful tasty black velvet---too little champagne and too much stout in too small a glass for $1.50, then stop in bookshop and find "Coast of Coral" at Marboro's and PROBABLY leave my BINOCULARS there, then hunt through the Coliseum Bookshop to find nothing new, pick up Gala ticket at the Library, and get home about 4 to stare with glee at my book list for about the dozenth time, lovingly noting that I still have 26 authors and 108 books left to get (though I STARTED with 26 authors and 106 books to get on February 16 and have since BOUGHT something frighteningly close to 100 books!!!) (but, of course, the list just gets more and more ACCURATE), but can't bring myself to typing anything, though I DO change my calendar-sheet anyway for May, and I sit down to finish "A Touch of Strange" and then regret at 4 that I didn't notice that "The Tribal Eye" was on TV at 3! Try to get rid of more stuff from the closet, but I can't bring myself to throw out some of the stuff, and later in the week I just push it all back INTO the closet. Lots of dish washing through this week, since we're eating here a lot, and I'm playing the music so much that, at one pause, I hear an agonized woman scream from the back somewhere, when I have the window open for the stuffiness, "Will you stop playing that MUSIC?" and that sends me into a dismal place about the woman tromping around upstairs, cats and dogs doing their things outside, and living in the city rather in a separate house like human beings do. May have taken lots of time to try to clean up my desktop, where things are laying forgotten for weeks, have dinner late, and then watch "Mary Hartman," and continue sitting to watch the start of "The Sea Hawk," but can't get into it with the smoking I'm doing to continue the muzzy effect of the wine, and I probably get into bed to try to jerk off my good way to compete with the sex with Dennis, and probably as usual I just whacked off any which way in order to come. Dennis went with Beatrice, Guy and Rhea to "Henry V," he said he MIGHT be over but doubted it, and wasn't. Felt self-pitying to be going to bed alone, wanting to be with Dennis and yet wanting to have time to work on my own stuff, and I'm building up from a puzzlement yesterday (see DIARY 10900) to what seems to be a psychic catastrophe during the weekend, centered around forgetting (see DIARY 10921), and I do far too much thinking before I get to sleep by myself.
DIARY 10912
THURSDAY, MAY 6. An almost totally lost day. I think I might not get out of bed until about 11, probably did one meditation and exercised, getting into the second level at last, but not much above 12 pushups and situps, and probably spent a lot of time on the phone, and ONE of these days (April 28, DIARY 10877) I spent a lot of time talking to Art Khanlian, Madge Mao Meyer, Barbara Brimberg, and Marty about going back to IBM. Sometime during here, Marty called with a long conversation about his writing the history of the New York City Opera, and his grandiose ideas of taking over the administration of that when Rudel either goes to Berlin, devotes himself entirely to conducting, or retires. Watch a "Star Trek" which is not a duplicate, I think, until it turns into a gunfight at OK Corral, and then take off for the Holiday Inn for the Body #3 (see DIARY 10913). Dennis had gotten tickets for Carnegie Hall on Saturday, which I'd forgotten about, knowing only HE had something to do, so I talked to Don and he invited me over to dinner on Saturday, and then I felt guilty telling Dennis about it when he asked me to see whoever it was, but I was later relieved to hear he had no trouble getting rid of the $7.50 ticket and that the Thelonius Monk program was better than this one was, so I was glad to have missed it. The PHYSICAL page is being typed because I refused to see "The Belle of Amherst" with Richard and Dennis this afternoon, and I can still hear BobG's statement about "You got to have priorities," and think of all the things I'm NOT doing and STILL don't have enough time to do what I want. Just have to do more of THAT because I want to have more time with Dennis just doing things, which will have to leave less time with typing, yet I can't have it hanging over me. Come up with the idea of putting the pages together every six months, to be sure to be restricted to one book (and not have such a STACK as I have now from over 16 months of pages which has just overflowed into the THIRD book). Later think that my physical and psychological discomfort MAY be coming up because of "The Body" which is supposed to make you feel worse before you feel better. Anyway, up to Dennis's afterwards for dinner, looking through the two books he bought from Barqu for me, and we're smoking and drinking and feeling FINE before sleep.
DIARY 10915
FRIDAY, MAY 7. Up late again, hugging, kissing, groaning, and I wish there were some way to record the marvelous things we think to say to each other in our times of pleasure: "You make me feel so good / I'm so happy I found you / I hope others have as nice a time together as we have / If everyone had a relationship like this, there wouldn't be much wrong with the world," etc. I phone the Olympia for the schedule, Dennis decides to see "Smile" with me, and then we're eating too long (cheeseburgers again, as I remember) and we rush pell mell up West End, down and up the tiring hill that bottoms at 96th Street, getting to the theater just in time to sit in the second row and watch "Smile" which I accurately predicted as being disgustingly sad and not so much funny as TRUE (the ruckus over the kid snapping nudes of the women when a body show is what the whole thing's ABOUT), and then it's pouring rain and Dennis decides not to do what he'd planned to do, get more pix and resumes and sits through "The Sunshine Boys" again---"Smile" was made bearable by having a perfect Bruce Dern as a sunnabitch, but I could only see that George Burns won an Oscar for TSB because he was the ONLY person in the whole film who was BELIEVABLE in the set of eccentrics, nonhuman at that, that results from Neil Simon's superficial insistence on getting in ALL his jokes and foibles even though it makes people TOTALLY unbelievable. NO ONE could be so stubborn, stupid, or crotchety as his characters. Out about 5:30, happy the rain has stopped, and I have to subway home for TDF vouchers for Larry Richardson, and just have time for mail and a few things like showering and shaving before I put on the disintegrating raincoat and get out at 7, there WAY earlier than Dennis, who takes a segment from "Sunshine Boys" and goes to WEST 14th rather than EAST 14th for the theater. The performance is pretty but not very exciting (see DIARY 10916), and then we wander out at 9:30 to look for some ethnic cheap place in the East Village to eat, and stumble across the Little Kitchen (see DIARY 10917), where we have an INCREDIBLE time until 1 am, out feeling as if we owned the place and New York too, going home to his place together for smoozing and almost instant sleep.
DIARY 10918
SATURDAY, MAY 8. Up for sex; since I was there I come back here; probably do a meditation and exercising; probably waste a lot of time. Can't remember ANYTHING about the earlier part of the day, but strongly recall that I don't feel like doing ANYTHING, not even going to dinner at Don's, which I predict will be a disaster, but I manage to shower and shave, watch a new "Star Trek" with France Nuyen's tears forcing Kirk to love her, and then call Don at 7 to say I'll be late; he says to bring two bottles, and I FORGET, which goes on a growing list of what I've forgotten (see DIARY 10921). Get out at 7:30 and to his block at 7:55, buying $4.15 worth of fruit at a ridiculously overpriced deli nearby, and get there to find that it IS a disaster (see DIARY 10919). No reason to stay, so at 11:30 I say I'm leaving, and subway home in a funk, buying the Times, and getting in to see the last good bits of Saturday Night with Madeline Kahn playing Pat Nixon during the last day in the White House, and then watch "North by Northwest" while working on the puzzles, and it's pretty good, though very slick, and that's over at 3:30 and I haven't finished with the puzzles yet, so I go to the dictionary and encyclopedia, and in the double crostic find that I'd guessed most of the first words wrong, but by simply plugging and plugging away, some of the more complicated words come clear, and I finish it, except that when I listen outside I can hear some early birds going (and a few days this week I heard a truly astoundingly versatile song bird outside, liking being here for a MOMENT), and turn the light off to find that it's light enough to read by the dawning brightness, and I feel totally disconnected from a sense of priorities (I'm surely connected with reality, because the FACT of my staying up until 6 am working a puzzle is VERY clear in my mind!), but put in the earplugs and pull the shades down and put the phone nearby and get to sleep without even smoking---no, maybe I even feel that I have to smoke, as some kind of insurance against lying awake and tossing around, and I'm not very happy about how some of the DETAILS of my life are going, though that's because of my DELIGHT at being with Dennis so much of the time. Crazy!
DIARY 10920
SUNDAY, MAY 9. Wake about 11:45, still feeling depressed, and when I try to get things together for the gala tonight, I find that I don't have my binoculars, and they're not at Dennis's, so I must have left them, as near as I can judge, at Marlboro's on Wednesday after lunch! Write out a list of OTHER things that I've forgotten that annoy me so much (see DIARY 10921), and do some VERY hard thinking about how I'm going to have to change my life (see DIARY 10922). Of course, none of the plans actually get into practice. Finish reading the Times, eat something---not very much, since I've been VERY bad on groceries lately and have almost NOTHING in the house to eat---and then start phoning Pope and Stephen and Don for binoculars. Get nothing from the others, so phone Don and get ready for the evening and go over and borrow HIS. HAD been depressed about not having enough money, and when BobG wanted to have lunch together beforehand, I just let him call Dennis, and they agreed to meet (and I'd forgotten that Guy and Dennis were going to see "Black Orpheus" and "Red Shoes" at the Bleecker) under the clock at the bank-corner of Lincoln Center at 6:30, and I called at 5:45 and said I wouldn't BE there, just lazing about too late for ANYTHING, but then I got the two bottles that Don wanted together, got a quick subway there, and figured I COULD just leave them off, get Don's $20, which I did, grab a cab, which I did, down to the corner by 6:39, but they were GONE. Went into three or four places on Broadway and all three on 64th by 6:50, and then stood puzzled by what to do next on the street, and there come the three of them with deli bags to eat in Guy's new apartment at 1 West 64th! Dennis comes over to buy my sandwich, we're up to eat in his GREAT white space, and then down to watch all the people at the Met gala for the library for a good cast and a disappointing program between 8:20 and 12:45 (see DIARY 10923). Out to hear BobG say he's hungry; most of the places are closed or closing, so we go to Guy's for eggs, talking about sex, and BobG and Guy seem to be hitting it off, but we leave about 2:15 because Guy has a meeting at 10 tomorrow, and we get to Dennis's to get to sleep fairly quickly.
DIARY 10924
MONDAY, MAY 10. We're cuddling gently, having awakened at 8:15, and the phone rings at 8:25 asking Dennis to come to a school on 94th and Park by 9 am, so he's up for coffee, I just dress and leave with him at 9, getting to Don's to return the shirt from March 27, the white umbrella from March 31, and the binoculars from May 9, and he gives me a blue overcoat, a blue "three-season suit," a brown and white striped shirt, and yellow pages that he's been saving for me since February, and the Rio stuff that I'd given him, all stuffed into a white shopping bag. Home at 11, phone Marlboro's to find they DIDN'T find my binoculars, then phone Arnie and Pope and go over at 11:30 to return the Rolling Stones paper to Pope (after getting both of them their mail and Arnie a Times), getting back papers I'd given him a couple of weeks ago; returning the two mousse dishes and the paté dish to Arnie, getting back articles he'd saved for me and the tape of BobR's record, and then at 1 we leave to look for stamp prices in the library, and I pick up a recording by Fred Rzewski on loan, then to the bank to cash checks for cash, then Arnie leaves for town, possibly buying me binoculars, and I go to the grocery store to stock up for the first time in AGES, back about 2 to finish up the bacon for lunch, finishing reading "Thunder and Roses" (see DIARY 10947; and Sturgeon IS a genius at characterization!) by about 4, then meditate later and exercise too, and then get to work fixing up the apartment, but don't get ANY typing done except THREE WORDS "Phone with Rolf" (see DIARY 10925) when I call him at 5:50 to return his call (and Fred Bassoff came over to return $40 during it) and he talks until 7:50 about his NOT taking his financial job, and then I get at last to clearing off the desktop, the last thing to be done (after shaving and showering), and JUST finish with that when Dennis rings at 9:30, comes up to neck, we have steak on the newly-split-level dining table in the kitchen (pulling out the OTHER, why hadn't I thought of it before?), and I tell him that Lauren Bahr called this morning to offer me WORK for the next two weeks, and then I play a bit of Debussy, we smoke the junk grass and I get VERY stoned and we have an INCREDIBLE session with slides (see DIARY 10926) that ends about 12, then put things away and get to sleep about 1, INSTANTLY asleep after the EXTRAORDINARY session.
DIARY 10927
TUESDAY, MAY 11. Alarm rings about 7:45, and we're cuddling, coming again, and we're just about to get out of bed at 8:20 when the phone rings for Dennis, and he says "No" to P.S. 163 in the Bronx, saying he HATES that school, and then we're up, I make breakfast of fried eggs in the bacon grease from yesterday, and we're out about 8:45, me getting to McGraw-Hill about 9:15 to have Lauren Bahr instruct me about the format of the Gregg typing tests that will be published each month for "Today's Secretary," which she gives me a copy of with her name officially ensconced on the masthead as editor. She gives me a cubicle near hers, saying that she'll be busy interviewing people to do the work I'm doing (and Friday Dick Sime shows me the job she's trying to fill, and it's advertised for $8-10,000, so I'm getting, actually, more than the person would get if it were fulltime), and I start copyediting some of the text, and it's pretty bad, particularly in the area of consecutive strings of more than 5 monosyllables, but I have to be aware of the 1.38-1.42 syllabic intensity (number of syllables divided by the number of words) for each paragraph too. She HAD a lunch appointment which was cancelled, and she's willing to try anything new, so we're out and pass the Sapporo and in for her to try the Donburi in a dish, lots of rice, and me to try the soup, lots of noodles, and it's tasty but NOT worth the $4 price for each of us. Back after an hour and start feeling the time lag, so I call a few people and give them my new phone number, and work through until about 6 so that I can say I worked 7 hours today, to be sure to make more than $50. Home about 7 and flabbergasted to get a postcard from Mom from LONDON, and I check back and she'd SAID she was going to be there for her birthday, and I call her and have a GREAT conversation (see DIARY 10928) from 7:27-8:05, and then type three pages just to do SOMETHING on that, putting on pork chops to be finished by the time "The Flying Dutchman" comes on Channel 13 at 9, and it's a pretty good (though static) production, in English which is not usually understandable, and I watch until 10:30, when I get out the porno and come again, whacking away at myself soft, sadly, and get to sleep about 11:30, exhausted.
DIARY 10929
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12. Alarm still sounds awful at 7:45, and then the phone rings AGAIN for Dennis, so I just say "No" to P.S. 163 in the Bronx, and get to work about 8:45 after having cereal for breakfast and taking out the Chinese laundry (and the hamper was so full because two sets of SHEETS have been in there for ages, and I couldn't have changed my sheets if I'd WANTED to for Dennis), and back to the typing things, trying to get to Dennis and Don about "Red Beard," which I saw last night and I wanted to see today, and I called Alice Duskey from work yesterday, and she wanted to come for lunch today, and then Lauren introduces me to the call directorix, so I call Alice to tell her to call ME directly, and she comes in at 1 just as Dennis calls from Pullman-Kellogg, where Career Blazers sent him to work in the mailroom, so he can't see the movie until 6:25. Then call Arnie, who's "doing sex" tonight, which sends Alice off into gales of laughter, and we leave to look for a place for her to treat me to lunch for $5, and we end up in Nemo's, being told it was good by a groovy jeaned guy and his girl coming out, and I fall in love with the Nemo Special and she has the Jules Verne, both good, and we have sole, she broiled and mine fried, better, and talk about her indexing problems. I stop off at Brentano's when I see the entrance on 48th, and discover that "Bend Sinister" is a McGraw-Hill paperback, and Lauren tells me she can get it for me for 50% off! Back to work at 3:10, work until 6, when I leave for the movie, stopping at Donnell at the thought I might be able to BORROW "Drumming" rather than buy it, singing for an NYC library card, but the music library's closed at 7:30 on Wednesday, so I do some card-catalog research and get to the movie to meet Dennis OUTSIDE (and I don't get ANY discount when she looks at the color of my card, good BEFORE 5 pm only) and Arnie INSIDE, who'd come to see it before his sex thing, and he said it was good but not great. But the crazed male-killer, the intern's stubbornness, the girl Otoyo from the brothel, the boy Chobo being called back from the dead in the well, the earthquake, the wife of Sahachi, the daughter and children of the old dying gold-inlayer, were all GREAT, and I cried in many parts and Dennis SAID he loved it. Bus uptown, get groceries, smoke, and have dinner in installments: vodka and orange, corn on the cob, roast chicken looking distractingly like roast baby, dessert of strawberries and sliced bananas and cream, and then sex where I come the same old way and he doesn't, bed 2?
DIARY 10930
THURSDAY, MAY 13. Alarm rings TERRIBLY at 7:30, he comes rather quickly, then he packs us both lunches while I shower, and he has fried eggs for the both of us with his toasted sprouted rye bread. Out about 8:50, having to stand on the subway, and I get to work about 9:10 to find that some of the early months have been typed on a form, so I get out the clicker and start clicking away just to give my fingers a rest, asking her the questions from before about what to do for the problems I'd found, and then we proofread some shorthand lists, find duplicates, and she thinks I'll have to find them ALL by indexing and sorting EACH WORD, but then decides the next day that the author explained the reason for the duplicates satisfactorily so I won't have to do them. Bob and Arnie have decided to see "The Bluebird" today, and I ask Lauren and she says she has no deadlines for me, that I'm working satisfactorily, so I say to Bob that we'll have lunch together, and then hang up to catch sight of my lunch bag, so I have to call him shamefully back to change the plans. Lauren leaves for a long lunch at 12, and I decide to check out the bookshop, and it's HUGE, on two levels, and I look for LOTS of things, checking the books in print for awhile, and get up an hour later to decide I should go to lunch, so I take my bag out to the vest-pocket park right next to the building, blighted by women talking, loud passing radios, smoke from adjacent chairs, but it's warm in the sun and I eat raisins, dates, a cheese sandwich, chicken, and a banana, then back at 2 to call Dennis to thank him, and HE can say "I love you" but I can't. Then out at 3:05 to meet them, and the theater's surprisingly empty for a first day, the show is VERY skimpy with AWFUL "Gershwinaires" as dreadful singers individually and together, a VERY old man in white and a big crotch tossing around a ballerina to Grieg, and the Rockettes as good as ever on a skimpy stage brightened by a standard glitter-curtain with a black hanging that makes it into the RCA building! Great idea! The movie is pretty bad, Nazdezda Pavlova being filmed ALWAYS behind trees and people, Taylor beautiful in many gowns, the Russian luxury-scene tacky with "The Luxury of Earthquake" Ava Gardner, and the Temple version MUCH better. Out at 6:10, over to Pastrami'n'Things for dinner of GREAT pastrami for only $5 (HA!) and over to the Belmont Plaza for est (see DIARY 10931) until 10:33, talk to someone about Jane Roberts and Seth until 11:05, home at 11:35, look through mail, finish "The Ebony Tower," smoke, and to sleep at 1:10 am: LATE!
DIARY 10933
FRIDAY, MAY 14. Alarm rings at 7:25 and I CAN'T get out of bed before 7:40, feeling how AWFUL it would be to ALWAYS be like this (and BobG had to get up at 6:30 for some interview!), and have cereal, fertilize the plants, and take out the regular laundry, and somehow what was OVER too much before is now UNDER too much, so I'll go BACK to trusting my scale. In about 9:10, but Lauren isn't in yet, and I've finished getting all the data on the newly typed months (3 of them) yesterday and finished rewriting June also, so now I just have to edit the typed versions. Call Guy and chat, but he'd gotten my address from Dennis (though not the spelling of my name), call BobG and Dennis (who's not working today, but wants to see a Bunuel double at the CH Cinema, and since it's "Tristana" I don't want to go, but decide to get home and TYPE these) and Don, who's willing to TRY to get to Great Adventure tomorrow, and I call Dick Sime for lunch, telling him ALL about my absent-mindedness with Dennis when HE starts talking about how strange he feels from smoking too many CIGARETTES. Down for an hour, then work until 5, finishing everything but one month's work, but Lauren said she'd have a typist in at 8:30 Monday, so she'll be finished before I am, and then up to find that "Drumming" IS at Lincoln Center (where I didn't think it was before), and get to Brentano to pick up "My Belief" at a great discount, and find the Robertson Davis book, and wander down 5th and along 42nd, looking into MORE used-book shops and finding nothing, and get home about 7:50 to find that John's IN FACT used the bankbook I put under his door this morning to pay off the loan; I scan Linn's Stamp News and get tempted to spend $190 on PILES of stamps; read mail; call Rolf who can't talk because he's having a dinner party at his place (!), and then type THIS as the 5th page tonight at 9:20 pm! Continue through 8 pages in all, and Dennis buzzes at 10:25, I put in 6 pork chops which strains the size of the broiler, cook up carrots with with butter and brown sugar, finish applesauce, and we're smoking and listening to Moody Blues, and he gets VERY hard after we smoke the water pipe, but then dozes off, still hard, and I suggest we get to bed, which we do at 12:30 or so, necking at the start, dozing off with lights on, definite image of him waking up when I go for water at 3:15, jerking off, but then we doze off again, and he says he doesn't remember ANYTHING about that, but it's a nice-feeling evening.
DIARY 10934
SATURDAY, MAY 15. I wake about 8:15, he doesn't until about 9, and he'd said he was SO tired at midnight after helping Guy move on Tuesday that he just went straight to sleep (after getting into his cock and talking about masturbating), so I didn't feel like setting alarm, though I figured we'd be up by 9, in time to call Don at 10, when he wanted. But we got into brightly lit sex and didn't finish until 11, by which time some old girlfriend that Don had once gotten pregnant (!) called for a party tonight which he didn't want to refuse, so we couldn't go to Great Adventure. Look at Jungle Habitat, then Dennis mentioned Coney Island, so Don says he'll pick us up, and we shower and shave and eat breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee and tea and toast, and get out about 12:45, getting there at 1:10 for a GOOD day (see DIARY 10935). Think about his two-hour meter at 3:20, but get back to find no ticket, then back to the city to HIS place, where I lay around and drink awful Fresca while he makes up and leaves about 4:45, and we walk in Riverside Park, and then Dennis takes me down to "his favorite spot" below 72nd along the rotting shoreline, and we follow a shorted fellow into a pier and have LOVELY quickie sex (see DIARY 10936). Back to his place at 7:50 still not knowing what to do, but he shops and we get up for fresh green beans a bit too much al dente, stuffed peppers with so little meat that after we smoke and watch a bit of Saturday Night on TV, I'm in the mood for food, and his newly-baked bread is toasted and munched, raisins are consumed, and vodka and orange juice is drunk. While he's cooking and washing up, I've been through the Times that was out by 8, luckily, and start on the puzzles, and then we lay around having sex for a bit, and HE comes nicely, but I don't feel like it then, so we watch TV, but we're SO tired from the busy day that we're both quite willing to flop into bed at 12:30, necking nicely, turning off the air conditioner that had been on and off through the muggy evening of a day when the temperature reached the low 80s with high humidity. Push down all the sheets, cuddle for a bit, feeling comfortably close and totally satisfied in practically all physical ways, and get to sleep immediately.
DIARY 10937
SUNDAY, MAY 16. Up what feels like early and he quickly comes, which inspired me to come quickly, and we're just resting together, come just beginning to dry, and the phone rings at 10:15 and it's Richard, who's invited up for breakfast in 45 minutes, so Dennis is into the shower and I'm finishing the puzzle and showering when Richard arrives, we have coffee and toasted homemade bread and omelets, and I decide I don't want to see "Belle of Amherst" and would rather come home and type. Leave the evening up in the air and I get home about 2 to a message I can't understand from Paul. He's not home, so I get down to typing before ANYTHING else (except watering the plants), and manage to type this as the 11th lovely page at 5:30, SO happy that I had a chance to catch up to THIS, but I'm left with 27 pages to catch up with that are NOT day pages, of which there are 40 (including 11 that ARE special pages that I've already finished). So confusing! 5/18/76 Watch a new "Space 1999," even though it's a repeat, and I can't figure out why the series always puts the human ABOVE the enlightened, unless it's to make fun of the HUMAN (see DIARY 10938), and then get back to typing, with a phone call from Paul, who may come over with his new "like," but Dennis doesn't call back, Paul calls at 8 to say that they've decided to stay home, and Dennis calls about 8:15 to say he'll do things at home and be over about 11 and I type 19 pages in all, feeling VERY good abut that. Then he comes in as I'm putting the dishes away, which I washed earlier, and we neck and drink vodka and Triple Sec and orange juice, then smoke because he ate with Richard after the show, and I had a half-Spam for dinner while watching the SST from 10 to 11 and then I answer his question from before about what I do when I come: build a basis of alcohol, spread a layer of grass on top, then the porno or person, then the bidi, then the popper as a peak-experience-climber, and we got into rubber bands and grass and even into the bedroom for porno, on the floor and small because Dennis has taken out his contacts, and I confessed I'd almost called him and told him not to come because I was tired, and we got into sex only for a bit before I went COMPLETELY down with rubber bands, and he didn't come, so we cuddled and got to bed, me feeling rather depressed about it, setting the alarm at 8:30 and saying, essentially, fuck McGraw-Hill.
DIARY 10939
MONDAY, MAY 17. I'm awake at 7, cuddling into Dennis, but he won't wake, or if he does he immediately goes back to sleep. Then awake at 8, but he's still having none of it, only awake when the alarm rings at 8:30, and then we cuddle and both come lying beside each other, and reluctantly out of bed at 9:20. I say I'm having only cereal, so he agrees, having orange juice and coffee for a rather liquid breakfast, and then we're out about 9:40, and I get to work about 10:10 to find Lauren at the printer's, so I get back to editing the typed copies of the typing tests, she's back quickly, I call Shelley and I'm due in on Wednesday to meet Tony Hernandez with the show, talk to Arnie and BobG, who's been sent away from his first treatment with NOTHING being done, which disgusts him, and talk on the phone so much that I don't get to lunch until 2, deciding to try the Pot au Feu across the street since it's beginning to drizzle, and have a good chicken cacciatore stew for $4.30 which is too much, though it IS filling and tasty and I get a second bun free. Back in half an hour to continue working, and it's obvious that I'll finish with that in the morning. We chat for a bit to pass more time, she fires the temporary typist who's too slow, and I get out of work at 5 to shop for groceries and get home at 6 in time to watch a new "Star Trek" about the black-white / white-black battle to the death, and then I'm looking through New York Magazine and the mail, heat the other half of the Spam while watching "Earthquake, A Warning" from 7:30 to 8, and Rolf calls and comes over to pick up a telephone, then sits and talks even though I say I want to work, and he says I can chase him out if I want, but I don't, though I DO want, and then Paul had called for poppers, saying he'd be over between 9:30 and 10, and he's over at 8:45 while Rolf's here; they chat for a bit, Rolf leaves, I sell Paul a bottle, he talks about his new friend and the "final" break with Buffalo and Jim with a note to Jim's mother, and then Paul leaves at 10 as "Lord of the Flies" comes on, which I pretty well don't believe, but it's a suspenseful film, particularly the part about the beast that comes out of the water, hangs from the trees, and comes in the night, and the MUSIC that comes with it. It's over at 11:30, I get stuff ready for tomorrow and smoke a bit before 12:15, getting to bed the EARLIEST in ages.
DIARY 10940
TUESDAY, MAY 18. Alarm STILL jolts at 7:45, but 7½ hours sleep feels better than LESS does, so I'm up and out after eating cereal and watering the plants by 8:20, and get to work by 8:50 to finish most of the editing, waiting for Terry, who finally comes up at 1:20 to get the bottle I brought in with me and smelled in the drawer all morning. Then I'm down to wander through the labyrinth under Radio City to find The Nook and have a spicy barbecue beef for $3, including tip, and AGAIN it's too much for too little, but my curiosity is being satisfied. Then to look through ALL the reference books: forthcoming, paperback, hardbound, and get my list of books up to date, back up to call Ginny Croft and talk to her at Harper and Row, and SHE hopes she can get Susan McMahon hired. Talk to Arnold and Dennis for a long time too, then finish the last of the editing and start into proofing the final versions of the copy that will go to the printer, except the typist hasn't finished them yet, so I start working on the 60/80/100/120/140 wpm shorthand tests for October, and leave the office at 5:20 to pick up my Chinese laundry and laundromat stuff and home by 6 to see ANOTHER new "Star Trek" (or, rather, one I'd seen before but hadn't entered on the list) while I'm putting the laundry and stuff away. Then wash socks, take the rent check down to Mrs. Johnson who had to call me to get it, and then Dennis called to say his dance class gets out at 8:30 and he'll be here for dinner later, so I settle down to typing this as the second page at 7:50 pm. Get through eleven pages before Dennis arrives at 9:35, then hug and talk and put on the hamburger while he takes a shower after dance class, and we eat and he asks me a question that it takes me all night to answer "Why do you write?" (see DIARY 10945). I show him lots of the datebook entries, we enjoy skimming through the people I've seen, then go through the Table of Contents, and he mentions some squib in New Yorker, so I get out the large scrapbook, show him my clippings from the bottoms of columns, at which he laughs heartily, and look at the clock and it's 12:15!! He later apologizes for his low energy level, but I'd been talking with him to MY benefit and he seemed to be staying awake, so I thought it was fine. Have watermelon before bed, smoke a bit in the pipe, and get to sleep about 1, setting the alarm for 7:30 for us BOTH.