1976 8 of 8
DIARY 11449
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19. Alarm at 8, he exercises and vocalizes and makes fried eggs for breakfast, and I leave at 9:25 for my haircut, we both go off to work, but I don't feel like doing anything. Bring up the mail and read the Phoenix about the Pilgrim's Church flea market after getting Arnie's message about it, so I dress and go out at 11:30 and buy a stamp album with 6 stamps in, cataloging at least 60¢, which I thumb through after I get home, and another edition of "Royal Road to Romance" that has many more pictures in it. Get a call from Arnie about 1:30, and he hadn't even BEEN there yet, and then I try calling Paul and Rolf and some others to join us at the orgy tomorrow. Dennis calls to say that Judy, who was supposed to come down from Connecticut, is sick so we won't do the thing at his place for dinner, Cookery for drinks, and some singer. He's read about Don Redlich so I suggest that, and we agree to meet at the theater at 7:15. I still don't feel like doing anything so I put things away, water the plants, fuss around with the chapter page-numbers that John phoned to me yesterday, finish reading "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and start "E Pluribus Unicorn," look through the mushroom book that came in today (actually, I guess it was TOMORROW), and then AGAIN feel like laying down to rest for a bit. The early sunset and darkness about 5 doesn't encourage lots of activity, either, and I'm wondering whether I'm listless from lack of sleep, lack of exercise, or the flu shot. Also, since I feel lowest after eating a dinner of hamburger (and lots of brownie, which I frosted today finally, which tastes VERY good), I'm wondering whether I'm getting too much cholesterol and not enough other things to prevent whatever diseases I'm reading about in Pediatrics, like hyperproteinemia. Shower and shave and wash my hair again, and it looks great, so I even brush it. Out at 6:55 and again the subways come very quickly and I'm there for two good seats and Dennis arrives at 7:35, and we're inside to look at his copy of "The Tall Ships" from Tree Communications. Don Redlich is surprisingly good (see DIARY 11450) and we're out at 10:15 with Dennis willing to walk down to Beaupere. He buys wine for $2.95 or something, Inglenook rosé mediocre, has a rather tough rabbit on a bed of farina, a tasty eggplant salad for a ludicrous $2.75, and I have the GREAT ribs, lots of food, and end with a strawberry mousse I share with him for $1.75, and he pays $26 for it all. Back to my place (I say I HAVE to work all day Saturday) and to sleep without coming at 2:45.
DIARY 11451
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20. Wake about 9, then lay until about 10:30, letting the star work over me from Actualism, and then Dennis is awake and we're opening the door and getting the popper for FABULOUS sex, both of us shooting in glee, and then up and make pancakes, which taste awful again, and poor Dennis just sits through them all, ending about 12. I'd gotten a call from Boguslaw Schaffer from the Wellington Hotel last night, but don't feel like calling him because I don't want to go into town today at all. Dennis gets to reading last Sunday's Times to clear that up, and I'm down for the mail to get lots of good stuff, his last check from Harper and Row, the mushroom book, but then I read through lots of the Soho Weekly News, articles that I really don't have to read, and that goes until about 3, when he says he has to leave, and I simply don't feel like working, so I settle down and read the rest of "E Pluribus Unicorn," greatly envying Sturgeon his writing abilities, and then start immediately on "Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow," which I read until I feel tired, and then sack out until 6:15, when I'm up to curse myself because it's a "Star Trek" whose title I didn't have, and I've missed it again! Cook the last of the hamburger, watch a "Space 1999" with someone named Christopher Sebastian Bach nude as a reborn guardian of a planet's computers that protect the moon from their blasts of energy, and watch the start of the International Image awards in fashion at 8 until I turn it off in TOTAL disgust. Shower and shave, then watch the start of "Billy Jack" at 9 to 10:55, and decide that I HAVE to get out to Arnie's, so I put on jeans and pullover without underwear and take over Dennis's mint jelly and the Microbiology text to Arnie, getting in about 3rd, and it's not the worst nor the best evening he's had there (see DIARY 11452). Out about 12:30 and watch the end of "Saturday Night" with Paul Simon hosting a tape of George Harrison in a dada-epic of his new song with lots of silliness, and that goes to 1, I glance through the Times, I smoke more, get out the poppers and porno, and try to get something going with rubber bands, but though I feel good at some points, it just doesn't work, so about 2 I put everything away and fall asleep after eating much too much brownies, oatmeal cookies, apples, and toasted muffins to GORGE myself with food to make up for the depression I'm hoping is due to the flu shot!
DIARY 11453
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21. Up about 10:30 to look through the Times, watch Camera Three for the end of Philip Johnson, sit through "Meet the Press" with Carter's transition chairman until 12, make some scrambled eggs for breakfast while finishing off another Scientific American, and finally finish the puzzle I started last night. Dennis calls to say he's talked to everyone, will be seeing Annabelle Gamson at 2, whom I don't care to see, and will be over afterwards. I sit to read more of the Jerome book, then at 3:15 decide to watch the better parts of "War of the Worlds," and get sucked into it again and watch through until 4:30, when "Moby Dick" comes on, and the credits remind me that it was written by Ray Bradbury, so I keep watching, paying particular attention to the dialogue, and the acting is good and Tashtego has a marvelous body and Gregory Peck is adequate as Ahab and the scenes with the whales were pretty good, so I sat and watched THAT until 7, with Jim Moultner coming over for some amyl and pricing 10 for $80, and then Dennis calls to say he's coming over, having gotten into things around the apartment and not having done anything. He's here about 8, after the "NBC 50 years" program went through the incredible trio of Tallulah Bankhead, Ethel Barrymore, and Groucho Marks, early TV shows of Redford, Newman, Dean, Verdon, Robertson, Sinatra, Nureyev, and lots more. Dennis, bless him, brings hamburger that he wants to use, and I boil noodles, fry the hamburger, pour on mushroom soup, and pour it over with corn, and it tastes GOOD, much to both our surprises. We're interested enough to watch until 11:30, when it's over, and then we smoke and the too-hot apartment cools into an almost-too-cool apartment as we cuddle in the bed, but then we're both feeling sleepy, he's down quite a bit of the time, and I've never really gotten UP, so we agree that we're sleepy and drift off to sleep at 1 am, rather early according to our normal schedule, setting the alarm for 7:45 so that, as I think, we can cuddle and come, but as it happens he just wants to get UP earlier. So I'm storing up a load from Saturday morning, and he's not sure about dinner tomorrow night AFTER Actualism because he doesn't want sex to start later than it HAS to. Bless his cock-oriented little HEART!
DIARY 11455
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22. Alarm rings and he's up quickly enough so that I can get the coffee boiling by 8:02, the earliest in ages. Make soft-boiled eggs since I have no dishes or forks left, and he eats so slowly I get started on the dishes as he finishes, leaving at 9:15, and I finish the dishes and out of sheer laziness sit down to read more of the Jerome book, but then decide to WORK, so I phone Boguslaw Schaffer at the Wellington and find that he's NOT there, has left NO forwarding address or message. So! Then phone Bruce Leiber and chat with him, giving him 6 names to check for freelance work in editing, and he's delighted with Actualism, telling me tales about that (see DIARY 11454). Then BobR calls and we chat for awhile, he wanted to see Dennis or me tonight, and then I phone Pope at 12:15 and he phones at 12:20 wanting to play Scrabble tonight, so that's 4 offers I have: dinner at Dennis's friends, Actualism, BobR, and Pope! I type up these 8 pages (11454 after this one, just for fun), and finish by 1:50 pm. Down for the mail, look through that, have lunch of tuna for the first time in awhile, then get to marking more of the index from 3:15 to 5:45, stopping then because it makes me come to a grand total of 100 hours SO far on the index and I'm LOTS less than 1/3 done! Then send a quick note to Nick Sanabria because he doesn't answer the phone about Actualism, and a note to Frances Klenett saying that I have the books she "found" and many others, too. Then get another "Star Trek" title for my list, up to 62 titles and 75 plot lines, and at 6:15 wash my hair, my body, and shave, finishing at 6:45, and then get everything together and Dennis calls with Frank's address and I leave at 7:05, getting to the apartment at 7:40 to find a PRIOR meeting just letting out. The composition of people is quite different and the lessons are more or less the same (see DIARY 11456). But it's longer than I thought they said, getting out at 10:35, so I call and they say to come over anyway, so I walk up quickly to their being-rebuilt apartment with two cats and have great soup, beer (since they drank all the wine) with roast chicken with good dressing and fabulous George-made pickles and awful George-bought chocolate covered truffles. Drink tea and leave at 12:15, to smoke at Dennis's and get into rather limp sex on the bed, both coming, then sleeping at 1:30.
DIARY 11458
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23. Alarm goes at 7 because Dennis wants to get the laundry, and we cuddle and I urinate and drink water because my throat is VERY sore from the dryness of his apartment, and I suggest he put water around. Leave at 8:45 when he goes to get stuff, walking up to 96th, and enjoy Lem's "The Futurological Congress" until Clark Street, where I get razor blades, 4 books from the bookshop, sherry, and a LOAD of groceries for $10 and change that I have a real HASSLE carrying to the apartment. No mail yet, sadly, and Fred Bassoff calls to try to get rid of his CAT! I work with booklist again, pleased that things are so early, then call John C to find WHAT IS going on with the deadline, and he'll call back after I do these 3 pages at 11:40. I start working on letters that I really want to send out, and write to the Webbs with the list of books from Rolf, to Mike with stamps that I'd sorted out long ago, one page to Bill explaining where I am and what I want to do with the tape and letters, and one page to Rita, which I'm just finishing about 3 when John C calls and says that there's probably a TWO week delay, having the last chapters to me the week of December 6th, which makes me feel just GREAT. Though I, for some stupid reason, confessed that I was only on page 820. Then work for two hours typing cards for pages 709 to 752 from 3:05 to 5:05, and shower and wash my hair and eat something (one of these afternoons for lunch I finished the roast beef, mostly fat and gristle left, that had been such a success last week), probably hamburger, before getting out---NO, Dennis called that we meet at 7 at Molfetas, and I left at 6:35 and I got there a minute after 7 to find him not there, and he arrived a minute later, having the waiter put our stuff at a table, and then we have to sit in the cafeteria-back instead. The moussaka is almost cold, the soup watery and hot but not very good, and the rice in the soup meshes with the rice on the dish, and Dennis can't finish his too-sweet dessert that he wants me to help him with, but I don't care for it. To the Uris for dead-center seats in narrow rows for a good production of an awful opera, "Porgy and Bess" (see DIARY 11459), and out at 11 to subway to his place for smoke and HE comes, but I'm tired and don't, getting to bed about 1:30, as usual.
DIARY 11460
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24. Wake at 8 and Dennis gets out of bed without even necking, and we have breakfast and leave about 9:30, and I get in about 10 to finish "The Futurological Congress" and fuss with other things, including the booklist when I'd bought "The Invincible" yesterday at the used-book shop, UNLIKE "The Cyberiad," which I'd passed up before and which was gone yesterday, and TODAY I get SENT "Cyberiad" and told they won't special-order "Invincible" so my order was cancelled! Fabulous! Later, Mrs. Johnson calls to say that I should pick up John's mail over the weekend, so I do. Get to work on the index at 12 to 1:25, typing pages 752-819, but that's still not enough to get me to the next thousand cards, so then from 1:25 to 2:30 I mark 819-841, typing them from 2:30 to 3, and that's STILL not enough by only a few, so from 3 to 8:15 I finish up the rest of the day, taking off an hour and 20 minutes for lunch and the mail (so I DIDN'T GET it in the morning), then 15 minutes to see the start of "Star Trek," another double, and finish the 1000th card at page 847, sorting them to verify that the first break probably WAS A-K, L-Z since THIS one was. Dennis calls for 10 minutes to say that I should come to his place for dinner tonight, and since I'll have worked 6.5 hours by the time I stop, I figure that's OK. Don't bother to shower, but DO stop at the wine shop, find a Charbaut Brut champagne that's marked as a $13 value for $7.89, ask for a second one, but the clerk can't find one and the manager finally comes back after I'm DETERMINED that he'll find another one---though he DID say that it should have been $7.99, and I'm wondering why it said it was a VALUE where on the sheet at the counter it WAS marked at $7.99. Then the manager went to where the wine SHOULD have been and found the LAST one, since the one before should NOT have been in that slot (and there was ANOTHER bottle with a low-level of booze inside that I refused, too), so I was pleased, though it took MUCH too long to find. To Dennis's for spaghetti (taking mine along) and meat, then we smoke, both come in great sex, taste his totally fabulous cranberry bread at the perfect fresh-from-oven temperature, and slip into bed pretty close to our tradition of 1:35 am, as Dennis has so often pointed out to me.
DIARY 11461
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25. We wake about 9:30 and have fabulous sex until about 11, when some friends of Rick's and Dennis's call with a spare ticket to "Aida." I call Marty, who says it should be a good cast, and then they call back and I say I'll take it. Leisurely breakfast about 12:30 as we slouch around the apartment enjoying a day off, and then I take off at 3 to go home for my binoculars, enjoying the half-fare subways today, but the ride takes 45 minutes and I call Dennis at 4:05 saying I'll be at Catherine's more like 5 than 4:30, but I'm enjoying reading "The Investigation," which is ANOTHER wholly different style for Lem, though sadly not nearly so interesting. Subway back after changing clothes into something more comfortable than the tight red turtleneck that I'd worn originally, and the party at Catherine's with Eugenie Leontovich is an enormous success (see DIARY 11462). I leave at 7:30, pretty well sozzled with about a bottle of champagne drunk through the day, since 10 of us eventually drank 8 bottles of the stuff, and Catherine's accusation that "I shouldn't have done it," turned into a "thank him from me" to her chagrin. I walk down to the Met for the opera, no one in the far corner scheduled for meeting at 7:45, but then they're there with their upstate faces and suits, and we're in for a pretty drab production and some totally mediocre singing (see DIARY 11463). Dennis meets us at 11:50, early though I wasn't able to get him at home, since he stayed and talked to Madame more, and they wanted bars, so we tried The Bushes but it was too crowded and loud, then to the equally loud Candlelight and Boot Hill, and they accept the LOUDER Warehouse, have a drink while I get hot and irritated at them, and then we leave about 1, they decide to go home, and Dennis and I walk home where I confess to feeling VERY tired and probably strung out because of all the champagne: but at least my fever has gone down from a top of 99.7°, and it feels at least that I'm in BASICALLY good health after the flu shot over a week ago. Dennis seems sorry that I'm not interested in sex, and I apologize for disappointing him, and then we're to bed and almost immediately to sleep, since I need it so much.
DIARY 11464
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26. Wake about 10:30, having slept about 9 hours, and we both feel much better, so that we start playing with each other and get going very nicely, both coming, pleased to have the time to play ONCE in a while. He gets ready rather slowly to go up to Doris Fish's, so I finish reading "The Investigation," telling Dennis that he doesn't have to be afraid of my recommending THAT book, and then we subway up to the next-to-the-last stop on the 242nd Street subway, 238th Street, and ask directions to Orloff Street twice before rounding the corner to the neat house of Doris Fish. She's got PILES of paintings on the wall, about a dozen of Tchilichew, sculptures by Zorach, drawings by Hassan and other famous people, and a LOT of what looks like junk. She seems to take to me, which is nice, and Dennis is beaming again. We're hungry so she gets right into the matzo brei, which she does VERY casually, and it's not as spectacular as it could be. Tea and apple juice and pumpkin pie make up the rest of it, and she shows us around the whole place, bemoaning Morris, and when I ask her what's wrong she says it's very complicated and she doesn't want to talk about it. We leave about 3, getting to Dennis's just as Richard calls, and he comes up about 5 and chats for a bit; Dennis leaves for his singing lesson at 5:45, and Richard lies on the floor to recuperate as I lie on the bed, quite exhausted, blaming it on the champagne and the intensity of the previous day, and Dennis is back at 6:45, and they're out to eat before they see "Guys and Dolls" that they'd bought tickets for, and I subway home to fill up the humidifier and find that the heat's not on in the 55° weather. I broil pork chops and watch "French Connection II" from 9 to 11:15, fixing up the apartment in the meantime, and totally hating the stupid, chauvinistic, prejudiced Popeye Doyle, and it's left open for ANOTHER, as Fernando Rey is shot ONCE and survives, and shot twice at the final blackout. Dennis is in at 12 almost exactly, saying that the play wasn't very good and VERY amateurish, though "Rocking the Boat" brought the house down, and we smoke lots and he comes on my chest and I don't come and we fall asleep at 1:35.
DIARY 11465
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27. We wake about 9:30 and have glorious sex, both coming with glee, until 11:30, when he calls Richard and he comes for breakfast at 12:15, then is kind enough to go out for syrup when I run out for pancakes. Coffee and pancakes and conversation until about 1:30, and then everyone's in for showers and shits, and I've got the shits proper, feeling tired still, wondering what it's due to NOW, realizing that I haven't been practicing as much as I should with the crown. Also not meditating and not exercising. Going to hell! Decide to try the subway exhibit, which is said to be closing on the 28th, and it's not really worth much, except that it's another item off my list, and the movie "Daily Miracle" is so bad and trite that we walk out: a perfect example of saying the glittering generality and permitting the audience to learn NOTHING. Lots of subway cars. Out at 3:45 and get to Times Square to a long TKTS line, Richard goes off to shop for records at Record Hunter, I time the start of "Carrie" and "Marathon Man" and find them to be no good, and he buys two tickets to "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" at 4:45 and we wander to 42nd to find no movies, he buys gum, we wander up 8th to a porno place and he takes me back along 42nd to 6th to see HIS favorite porno-playing palaces, but the crowds are awful and nothing much happens. Into Burger King for french fries and we sit upstairs and read for half an hour until 6:30, when we're up to 8th and 51st for La Grillade, where I have dry tasteless Roulade of veal for $10.55, Dennis has mediocre frog legs and Rick good duck, and the salad is good and the mushrooms as appetizers are numerous, but Dennis's eel has bones in it and it's on the tough side. They return for dessert, I have a pastry until 8:05 and then walk uptown, feeling tired AGAIN, and get in at 8:30 to watch "Blue Water, White Death" until 10, then work the lengthy puzzles and finish reading the Times while watching an awful "Saturday Night" from 12 to 1:30, the very end of "Casino Royale" until 2:15 (Dennis and Sonny and Rick came back about 12 to change for the Toilet), then "Portrait of a Mobster" to see how they treat the last words of Dutch Schultz, but he was just shot and his hat was swept down a sewer for The End. Dennis in at 3:30 and we have some of his cranberry bread and fall into bed without smoking.
DIARY 11466
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28. His folks wake us at 10:30 and they talk for a long while, and then we have breakfast as he says he DID come last night at the Toilet after playing with some guy with a cockhead like a doorknob. It's not quite as warm as the 60°+ temperatures yesterday, but we're out to walk across the park at about 3 to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, walking around all the construction in the back to get in the parking-lot way, and up to see the Munich Mannerist lendings, then wander back to see the Daniel Chester French sculpture (and he sure didn't care for male nudes much), and then down to find a 20-minute wait for the Egyptian exhibits so we decide to wait for the Wyeth line, which takes about the 10 minutes it's said to take, and in to the sketches and paintings and drypoints of the fellow that Dennis says is an artist and I say is Norman Rockwell with detail added, but we both agree that a dog in the snow, a snarled snatch of black brushstrokes, is truly artistic and I think it's one of the best things in the lot. Out at closing at 4:45 to catch the Lexington subway that happens to stop at South Ferry, so we transfer at Fulton Street and get home for me to pick up the mail. Rolf was buying a paper at the station, and he comes up to chat with Dennis about his job as I make pork chops for the two of us, since Rolf has just eaten, and wash a plate because there are no clean ones. He sits and drinks sherry and chats with us while we eat corn and cranberry sauce and pork chops, then we're in to watch the start of "Evening at Symphony" for a 10-minute Schoenberg work, and then we laugh through much (though much is awful, too) of the 8-10 salute to 25 years of Lucille Ball on TV, and I remember MANY of the sketches. Then Rolf leaves when Dennis and I start smoking and drinking, and I put on music and we get into the bedroom and he comes on my chest and I use the come on my cock for an extremely drawn-out build-up to orgasm, using poppers lavishly, and shoot in a great groan of agony, lying limp, and then up to GORGE on toasted muffins, the last of the Rice Krispies, apples (had popcorn for Rolf and us during the TV show), and the table looks like we've been eating for HOURS. Actually get to bed about 11:35, amazed that such things are possible, setting the alarm for 7:45, a scant 8 hours away.
DIARY 11467
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29. Dennis is groggy when the alarm rings, but he opens the door to come again on my chest, and I say that I don't feel like it, but I figure "Why not?" and come again, feeling my cock reeking of come. Scrambled eggs for breakfast and he leaves about 9:15, taking a corned beef on muffin and an apple with him for lunch, and I clear off the kitchen table and kill an UNGODLY number of white flies while Dennis is finishing eating. I guess the warm weather over the weekend hatched a lot of their eggs on the leaves. I phone Arnie and talk for a long time and get down to some diary pages but I just don't feel like DOING anything. Then John calls about 2:30 and says that ALL the final chapters have come in to him today, and we decide that January 6 is a good deadline, since I said this is exactly what I DIDN'T want to happen. Still feel dreadful and phone Actualism to find that I've been doing everything wrong (see DIARY 11468). Try doing it right, but I really can't concentrate, and get back to doing some more pages, at last managing to squeeze out 8 pages, but I just don't FEEL like doing more, so I watch the last half of a horrible "How Awful About Allen," with a semi-blind Tony Perkins being victimized by a phonily-burned Julie Harris from 5:15 to 6, then check the "Star Trek" duplicate. Had eaten a corned beef sandwich while reading New York for lunch, and showered and washed my hair and cut my face a lot while shaving (and have AWFUL complexion problems) and have the last of the pork chops until 7:10, when I dress too coolly for the weather that's gotten below freezing (and it SNOWED today; didn't STAY, but it came down in BIG flakes) and find people STILL waiting for the room at 7:55. In to a dizzying session (see DIARY 11469), but it's over at 10 and I walk quickly to Dennis's in the freezing evening and almost finish my book before he comes in at 11, to say that he KNEW that HIS personality profile card would be chosen, and that it was of ME. He bakes chicken pot pies that we eat at 12:30, then smoke, and neck on the floor and get into bed and into his cock; he comes, rolls off so that I can use his come on my cock, adding bloodied spit from my embarrassed mouth, and come in a gout, then in for toasted bread and tangerine juice dessert until our bedtime: 1:39 am.
DIARY 11471
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30. Radio goes on at 8, Dennis is jerking off already, and I watch him with pleasure as we swing around to light and he gets the popper, and again he rolls off so that I can work on me, and I do it dry this time, getting into a semen-speckling come, quite soft, but feeling like I really CAME. Noted at breakfast, reading the New York article on sexuality, that "if you don't use it, you lose it," and I'll surely NEVER lose it NOW. Fried eggs and toast for breakfast, Dennis feeling pretty awful, and home finishing "Memoires Found in a Bathtub" at 9:45 to get to the bank (signed the check over to HIM), check the bookshop, and buy groceries and meat, and home to find a LOVELY offer of 4 books from Hirsch which I order, along with the added one from S&S and requesting the refund from Bookpost. I also send out two bills and decide to continue typing by writing a letter to Rachel In with two pages of index samples, and write to American Heritage Editor Brandt, too. Play Bruckner symphonies while I'm filling the humidifier with water (radiators on almost constantly with moisture freezing white flies to the kitchen window), watering the plants, making the bed for the first time in ages, harvesting the grass from the plants I'd cut in the living room, and even phoning Duttons to find they probably aren't planning any Blackwood reissues. Arnie calls and comes over at 3:30 for juice and his theater vouchers, leaving me four dance vouchers and clippings that I read, and I put on more music and wash dishes, then settle in to typing the rest of the diary pages, seeing duplicate "Star Trek," and phoning Lauren (she'll call tomorrow) and JohnC didn't call, and Dennis called for me to go see Joe Turner with him and Peggy, but I said I'd sit home and work on the index. Cereal for "lunch" about 4, house finally looks like it's together, Arnie mails my 6 letters, and I finish these 5 pages at 6:45 pm. Get back to the index from 7:08 to 8, when I watch an old BBC "Alice Through the Looking Glass" which is imaginative with drawn backgrounds and tricky cameras but boring because it follows the text LITERALLY, even to the fly with a burning rum-raisin for the head. Then at 9:30 sit though the battle of Jutland on "World War I" and back to marking from 10 to 11, when I start to watch "The Servant" on Channel 13, disgusted that they delay the start because of their news summary. Dennis enters, and it's a night that SHOULD have been different (see DIARY 11472).
DIARY 11473
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1. Have the early morning described on DIARY 11472, then get these two pages typed to catch up with December 1st by 10:35 am. Change the calendar sheet to the month of December, LAST of 1976 already! Bring the job-money book up to date for November and turn over BOTH sheets for December, and get to marking from 11 to 2:40, and John finally calls and says he's sending over a messenger, who gets here about 1 and says he wanted to go HOME, but he takes my package back, 852 pages for John to check from chapters 1-16. Continue marking and typing until 5:40, when I put on hamburgers to eat with the duplicate of "Star Trek" at 6, and finish dinner and type from 7-9, when I take off to watch "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" again, and it's much more meaningful after having seen "Summer and Smoke," and this woman is FAR more forceful that the original Alma, the father is much less believable as a PERSON but much more believable as the source of the madness of the mother and the frustration of the daughter. Frank Langella is fluttery-eyed as John, and the fellow who plays the second man at the meeting looks just like Bill Dremak, and Dennis says he plays his Dremak-part well. Then continue marking from 11:10 to 12:10 on one of the chapters that just came in today, so that I can type up the cards consecutively, and then I settle down for the SECOND intensive work with the Star Path to Actuality. This morning from 10:40 to 11 I sat down and rather methodically went through lessons one, two, and three, and put down questions that I had for each of them, but felt that I hadn't quite gotten down all my questions, so I left the list to be added to later. Felt OK doing it, but I don't have quite the feeling of "accomplishment" that I had when I just meditated: THAT was 20 minutes, no more and no less, but THIS can be any length of time, and some of the time I feel that I'm pushing whatever-it-is to do things that it or I am just not quite ready for. Put down questions 1-4 at the start, then 5 at the end of the day. Don't feel like smoking or drinking or ANYTHING, so I just brush my teeth and get into bed with my earplugs in, ready to get as much sleep as I need from 12:30.
DIARY 11474
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2. Wake about 8:30 and vaguely lay until 8:45, then up to have breakfast of cereal, finishing another New York Magazine, and then sit down again to go through all three sessions of Actualism, and it feels a bit easier now, though again I forget to put down questions that I had about it. Water plants, make the bed, go down for the mail but it isn't there yet, and then get to marking more from 10:30 to 12, then down to GET the mail, but there's not much to it, and I've called Lauren again and she'll call me back, called TDF about the Dance Calendar, and get a couple of calls from Dennis and give HIM a couple of calls. Have lunch about 1, feeling TERRIBLY normal about the day, then type and finish another 1000 cards, this being the TENTH 1000, from 1:20 to 2:50, and then I'm back to marking pages. Nat Brandt calls to say that my letter to American Heritage arrived at the PERFECT time, and he'll call me Monday to say if the woman who was doing it freelance in FACT intends not to do it any more, and I'm so delighted that I call Dennis and Pope and tell them about it. Talked to Arnie this morning, too. And Susan called. Mark from 2:50 to 5:20, talked to the people, and Lauren called JUST as I was getting a new "Star Trek" title at 6, talking to 6:30 about her freelance writing for Justin Call, or whoever is president of the American Ballet Theater Foundation, who could get her tickets to ANYTHING. And I mark on my calendar that she's having open house on Christmas. Had even EXERCISED this morning. Then wash my hair, since it's so messy and Dennis MIGHT come over this evening, put on chicken in Product 19 crumbs at 8:30 that's still not quite done at 9:30, then go through all the lessons AGAIN and mark down questions 6-11 to almost complete the list, and start generating a list of the times that Dennis and I spent what evening together where (see DIARY 90030---so I DID type one page today!), and THAT takes about an hour! Then watch "The Browning Version" COMPLETE from 11:15 to 12:35, JUST as Dennis calls to say he'll be over after Joe Parker and eating with Peggy in the Village, but he DOESN'T get off the local at Brooklyn Bridge and gets taken for a time-wasting ride and comes on the Lexington in the 20° weather without a hat from Borough Hall, saying he'll stick his head into the oven if it's OK with me. I'd shaved and brushed my teeth and on an impulse did the dishes before he got here at 1:30, we had tea and talked and smoked, crawled into a warm bed and observed "Oh, you're horny, aren't you?" and I jerked off nicely (he not) to 2 am! And how's that for getting to the end of the page!
DIARY 11475
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3. Alarm rings at 7:45, which he'd demanded after I suggested he set the alarm for 9:30 and then call in late, since he's starting est tomorrow morning at 8:30, but then he LAYS until 9:15, gets up to shower and shave while I make coffee, broil bacon and fry three broken and one too-soft-white egg, and he leaves at 10 and I type two pages by 10:50 am. Then get into Actualism to SUCH an extent that I phone Bruce and ask a number of questions (see DIARY 11476) and type a page about that (changing ribbons AGAIN), and then go through my notes and sheets and transcribe things back and forth and come up with ANOTHER sheet of questions, fewer silly ones like before, which I save for asking the NEXT day (see DIARY 11477). But AT LAST I get through the practice session, and then I exercise, and by then it's 3 and I have to shower and shave and get out to the subway at 3:45 to get to the Bleecker Street Cinema for "Mean Streets," a study of the CRAZY activities of Italians who are ONLY into making money by ANY means, with a beautifully-bodied Harvey Keitel acting someone who SEEMS to have the hots for the crotch of sexy Robert DeNiro, with lots of stupid fights and ego-talking; and "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" a VERY mixed film with some TERRIBLY amateurish work and some GREAT sex scenes between Zina Bethune and Harvey Keitel, down to the pubic hair, with a riotous send-up of RC images in church with rock-and-roll music at the climax. Performance following mine sold out, too. Look through the bookshop for about 20 minutes, then subway up to Crawdaddy for Sammy Price and his boogie-woogie piano that start when Dennis asks for "Rollem," after exchanging glances with the Harlem drummer; GREAT trumpeter and mediocre food for $34.50: so-so cantaloupe and fruit and pecans for him, thick filé gumbo with too much rice for me with great flavorings, with a crawfish on the side that tasted bad, much better in his crawfish pie, with LOTS of crawfish; but my shrimp and ham jambalaya, though tasty, had too much rice and not enough shrimp for $6.25. He liked my Widmer's Lake Niagara, my crème brulee was caramel custard, not bad, the banana fritters were THREE tiny ones for 75¢, pity, and his absinthe frappe was ice cream and cream and a LOVELY flavor, and we HAD: "Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and filé gumbo" even the "fruit jar." Home at 11, smoke, he comes on my chest, and we set the alarm for 6:30 and get to bed at 1, me not coming; exhausted!!
DIARY 11479
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4. Alarm at 6:30 all right, but he's out of bed at 6:45, just barely beginning to be light outside, and shaves and showers and I put on coffee but he only has two cups and decides to eat tuna while I sit and watch him in a FUNK. He leaves at 7:45, so he should be on time, and I crawl back into bed to wake again at 10:20, deciding to come, so I get out the porno, come VERY quickly, read more of my Lem "Cyberiad," and then find myself jerking off a second time, disgusted with myself, getting out of bed at 11:30 having done NOTHING yet. Water plants and have cereal for breakfast at 12 and down for the mail and read most of Soho Weekly News and get two indexes (LONG!) from Brandt, and then phone Bruce Jeffe about 1:30 and write the call up on DIARY 11477, and then phone Bruce Lieber about 2:30 and he phones back and we talk for about an hour, so I finish 3 pages by 4 pm!! Then exercise, have lunch of the chicken, which tastes about as bad cold as it did warm, so much for the cornflake/ condensed milk-covered chicken! Even sit down with cookies and read more of Lem until 5:30, when I get back to the index, taking time out to verify the "Star Trek" duplicate, and work till 7, when Barbara Bain actually has to show some emotion when Commander Koenig is duplicated by a "mirror image" that wants to recreate his energy-dried asteroid, but when the power's shut off, he breaks like a mirror. Back to marking from 8 to 10:30, taking lots of time to number all the pages and find, to my only moral triumph, that chapter 32 DOESN'T include the illustrations and thus CAN'T be considered complete, can't be indexed yet. Can't wait to call him on Monday. Then watch the first part of "The Fight Against Slavery," with nice bodies and even some cocks: archaic in black-and-white, then I discover it's in COLOR. That's to 11:30, eating the rest of the chicken during it, then make VERY messy oatmeal cookies with nuts, and soup, and go for the Times at 12:15 and work both puzzles and read most of it, eating cookies and soup when they're both finished, by 3, and then flop into bed by 3:15 and spend a half an hour working with the Radiant Warrior until 3:45, dropping off to sleep immediately afterward, wondering if I should have called Dennis, who's just been through the first day of est (he got home 1:30).
DIARY 11480
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5. Wake early but doze back off and get up at 10:30, read more of the paper while shitting to 11, watch a BEAUTIFUL unnamed student in a film dramatizing the end of Gaudi on Camera Three, watch Lance while reading more paper until 12, then have breakfast and suddenly remember the sex information show on Channel 13, and there's Arnie right front and center in an interesting show with Mary Calderone, John Money, Dr. Silverstein who's gay, and Alice Kaplan Singer, or whoever, from the old gay-talk at Cornell Medical Center. That goes until 3, I check that the Dutch Ballet is not following on 13, then sit down to mark 56 pages in the three hours from 3:10 to 6:10, then go in to warm up the soup and make Spam sandwiches and eat a VERY late lunch, for a late dinner waiting for Dennis, who's to come if before 2 am and call if after, and I type the page for the day by 7:15. Then I don't remember what I do, except I probably fix up the apartment, maybe washing the dishes, and mark more pages from 8-9, then don't feel like doing that any more and set a new record for speediness of typing cards: 1000 in 2 hours 45 minutes between 9 and 11:45, going on past 11 because the woman upstairs seems to be training her cat to dash across the floor whenever I'm typing late at night. Arnold calls at 12 and we're talking about his being on the TV show until 12:15, when Dennis rings the bell downstairs and comes up DELIGHTED with est, having been touched the first afternoon, crying and crying, and he got home about 1:30, slept well, and selected accepting his face and body the way they are for the truth process, telling me that Jerry Joiner kept everything UNDER CONTROL, so that he could be heard through the whole thing, and then Dennis enjoyed the standing part of the danger process and didn't care for the end of it, lying down and being told to "spit in their eye" to show that you're not afraid of them. But he said that the whole group was trying to get something done, so it went very quickly. We're very cuddly, getting to bed about 2, and he's VERY hard without even touching, which is GREAT for me to feel, and he reams out my mouth for a long time and then comes on my chest, and I just feel too tired to do anything, so we get to sleep about 3, setting alarm for 8:30.
DIARY 11481
MONDAY, DECEMBER 6. Alarm rings, but we ignore it and we start cuddling about 9:30 and I come rather quickly and then he comes again, and we're up for me to make scrambled eggs and the rest of the bacon for him, and we eat, he phones in to say he'll be a bit late, and he leaves about 10, not really that late---NO, he leaves at 12 because we slept a LOT later, and I went down with him to pick up the mail, and looked through that for a long time and finally got down to marking more pages in the index at 1:25 until 3:50, when I stop for lunch of tuna fish, after exercising, and then get back to marking---no, I tear apart the cards and alphabetize my 11th thousand cards from 5 to 5:30, and then shower in preparation for going to Actualism, tuning in on "Star Trek" to add a title to my list, and I watch it for a bit and THEN go in to shower, getting out before it's over to watch the end of it, as they take the Klingon Commander captive, and then shave and get out at 7:30 to JUST miss a train and consequently get to the hotel about 8:05, having practiced the Radiant Warrior on the train, just as Jan then SAID I could, and I pay $10 for the class, $3 for the book on Actualism that I've decided to buy, and $11 for the Christmas dinner on the 15th. Have a good lesson (see DIARY 11482) and get out at 10:15 and hurry up to Dennis's by 10:30 to find that the Wolf Trap Special on Baryshnikov started late and all I miss is the "Coppelia pas de deux" and the first half of "Spectre of the Rose." Get to see "Vestris" and "Push Comes to Shove," neither of which I like very much, and they end with the "Don Q" with a Gelsey Kirkland who looks quite a bit better than before, except that she's VERY thin. That goes to 11:15 and we decide we don't want to see "The Man in the White Suit," and Dennis has made chicken for dinner, with scalloped potatoes, which I eat too much of, then some apple cake for dessert, and by that time it's about 1:30 he does the dishes while I read the Actualism book and I'm feeling VERY sleepy, so we're into bed and BOTH too tired to do anything but neck gently until he puts the light out about 2, and we fall asleep quickly in a room that's so warm it almost feels like spring again: I think of a beach and he thinks of a desert, so at least we're both into the warm sands!
DIARY 11484
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7. Alarm goes at 8 and we feel pretty good, cuddling and coming, both of us, and he's not quite ready to eat yet, which I say is OK, so I start marking at 9:45 and go through until 12:45, interrupted for his leaving for his haircut at 11:30, questions about captions that he's doing, and then he's back and makes breakfast of PERFECT fried eggs---and I joke that est certainly transformed his life in THAT area!---and the rest of the scalloped potatoes, and then I look through his New Yorker and his Smithsonian and call Arnie to find that he'll be at work at 5:30, so I decide [this is BACKWARD: I'd HOPED to have breakfast with Susan, but it was RAINING very hard outside, I had my lousy SHOES on, so I didn't want to go out. Dennis had brought (by coincidence!) captions HOME with him to work on, so I decided to sit with him and WORK, leaving lunch for Thursday, since Susan was taken on Wednesday, so that I can get the Clarke postscript xeroxed only one day late] to use the day in town to shop at Macy's with the $100 I brought with me to buy index-strip cards with. Finish my pages between 3:13 and 3:43, making good progress, and Dennis takes off for work and I get down to Macy's about 4 and find they have NO shoes at ALL decent for under $33, buy a GREAT pair of black woolen pants for $17.50, and then with the spare time get two pillows for $9, cheaper than I could get from Unity, and look at books but find none. Arnie's checking with the floor boss for about 15 minutes, then he has to TAKE my stuff to get them past the guards. Home depressed because I left my pages in the bag, and then I have dinner of tuna and cookies and milk, FOUND A NEW "STAR TREK" until 7, though sadly I didn't get the title, getting in at 6:10, and then RELUCTANTLY got down to indexing from 8:15 to 11:15, when Arnie called and I went over to pick up my stuff, have mousse with him while he ate a salad of caviar, sardines, fish filets, lettuce, and other things, and we chat until about 12:15, when I leave, dump the stuff on the floor, cover a pillow to crawl into bed and smoke with, getting out the poppers for ONE sniff that takes me over the border and I come almost without wishing it, then gorge myself with cookies in the dark and get to sleep about 1:30, not WORKING enough.
DIARY 11485
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8. Out of bed at 10, so I must have needed sleep, and start to exercise but Nat Brandt calls, saying he'd left me a message on Monday or Tuesday that I didn't get, which puzzles me, and asks for my estimate. I figure and get back in half an hour with $4500-5500, and he confesses that SHE had done it for $350/volume, or $3500, so I think about it and finally call back with American Heritage $2200-2400, Horizon $1500-1600, which makes the range $3700- 4000, but I say that I WANT to do it, that I'd do it on TIME, and they should be willing (I hope) to go up a BIT for someone new to do it that's QUALITY. I suggest it would take me 450-500 hours, after he says that he thinks $8/hour is a BIT on the steep side. I say that I'd love to try it once. Phone John C and check on the folios for the remaining chapters, Susan to confirm Thursday lunch, Dennis to tell about Arnie's willingness to write captions, except that Andrea might not need anybody, and Art to find that he has a part and wants me to go up to the country, I guess to help him with the carpeting. I finally exercise, go down for the mail at 2, then type a letter to the checking account and get out at 2:45 to mail off the money order for my account, shop along Fulton Street and Korvette's and A&S to find awful shoes and end up getting $12.91 (including tax) Navy oxfords that Dennis will just HATE, but the NEXT best thing I saw was $20 for not much style and thinner soles, so that's IT. Back to buy a red marker, Avalon's "Serpent Power" for $7 from the bookshop, and mucho groceries that I lug home with everything else. Make Knorr's oxtail soup to snack on at 5:30, then ACTUALLY SIT AND WATCH A "STAR TREK" THAT I'D SEEN BEFORE until 7, feeling just AWFUL about it. Then start putting things away, and at last catch up with these five pages by 8:35, TOO LATE! Then take a shower and wash my hair and shave, put on the beef roast for Dennis, write a note to Rita to enclose with the birthday card I'll get her tomorrow, and then stop to watch "Tennessee Williams' South," which is pretty bad, seeming to include a LOT of what's been done on TV before, and some AWFUL stagings of scenes from his plays where the people are definitely ACTING rather than living. Dennis gets in at 10:50, we have dinner, he works on captions and I on index from 1:15 TO 2:25, then crawl into bed, introduce him to his new pillow (which he didn't notice, so he mustn't have been put off by the OLD one), and bed at 2:50 am!
DIARY 11486
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9. Try very hard to go through the Actualism exercise, but it just doesn't get anywhere before the alarm rings at 9:30. We lay, mutually commiserating until 9:50, then up to make coffee, he works, I have cereal since I have lunch with Susan at 12:30, and AGAIN the day will pass with little done. Tried calling David in Joan's apartment last night, no answer; Eddie this morning, he's not there; Susan, SHE'S not there. What IS this? Disgustedly type this single page of the day by 11:10, done NOTHING yet! Don't even shower, I guess, but get things together and get out at 11:30, taking out the laundry, and get to Susan's office at 12:15, and Ginny's there with someone else, so I don't do xeroxing then. Out to Hunan Yuan where she orders DYNAMITE eggplant dish and I have GOOD chicken and bean sauce, but the bean sauce isn't that good, and she has GOOD hot and sour and my shredded pork and sour cabbage isn't that great. $11.50 SOUNDS so expensive for something that SEEMED so cheap! Back and she does the xeroxing for me, delightful, and Ginny may have some indexes for me! Walk down to Apollo and get 20 boxes of cards, and have not too much trouble lugging them on 4 subways: 28th to 14th, 14th to Bowling Green, BG to Borough Hall, BH to Clark, though I rest twice on trek from St. George. Call Dennis, who's happy about buying boots, then out to return book with 5¢ overdue charge, pick up stamps for Xmas cards, pick up laundry, buy card and send it to Rita without signing it (though I laugh about it on back of envelope), check that Rambol should NOT have little crunchies in it and I should bring it back, and buy Amaretto. Home at 5:15, put things away listening to awful repetitions by Philip Glass, Fred comes in at 6 to buy 6 bottles for $47.85 (he IS an ass!), "Star Trek" duplicate I watch beginning and end of, then get to typing another 1000 cards from 7:10 to 8, find that Wolf Trap is Dionne Warwicke again but watch a good "Harry Truman: Plain Speaking" with sonofabitch, bullshit, damns and hells intact from 8 to 9:10, and finish typing at 11:15, sorting at 11:50. Then roast the rest of the beef and eat it while watching the end of the horrible "Orders from Above" where the ENGLISH repatriated thousands of Russians to their deaths, and get caught up in "Lavender Hill Mob" from 12:30 to 2, delightful, but I think I'm coming down with a COLD. To bed and TRY to do the LHP for about 30 minutes, but mind WANDERS and I fall asleep with blanket controls at 6.5. TOO HOT.
DIARY 11489
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10. Wake at 7:30 with the bed WET from leaving on the controls too high, and I doze and wake at 9:30 to work with the LHP until 10:10, coming up with all sorts of questions that I call Jan about (see DIARY 11487) and then feel somewhat more energized already and type 3 by 11:15 am. More questions come up and I call AGAIN (#5) and get Wyndee about specifics, take the RW through the cycle once, then above: CCW downpour for 5 minutes, CW downpour for 5 minutes, then CENTER it and expand it non-rotating and protecting. Then work from 12 to 3:30, taking out an hour to talk to Dennis, go down for the mail and read it, marking 1396 to 1440, then from 3:30 to 5:45 I type from 1170 to 1214, taking out 45 minutes for lunch, so I worked only 4 hours today, which is NOT going to permit me to keep on my too-tight schedule. Try leaving word for John to call me, but he doesn't, really pissing me off. Then shower and dress for the weekend and the first of the Androgyny seminars, getting there at 7:25, but there's no one to register with and I don't know anyone there, so I moon about until it starts at 7:45 (see DIARY 11490) and ends at 10:20. I'm sort of disappointed in her as a lecturer; she really doesn't seem to have any material that will SURPRISE anyone. Bus across, enjoying the ride, and get to Dennis's just as he's pulling an apple cake out of the oven (no, letting it rise to put it IN), and we have dinner and get to cuddling. I'd been tempted to say that I'll really be shooting a lot tonight, since I haven't come in such a long time, since Tuesday, but then decide it wouldn't be good to talk about it, and tell him I'll tell him what I'd begun to tell him (and then stopped) before we go to sleep. It's good I didn't say anything, since I'm so preoccupied with my business and his going to est tomorrow that I'm sucking on his cock and playing and teasing and sucking, and I'm not up AT ALL, conscious of the bandages on the backs of my heels from the new shoes, conscious of the droopy belly from too much to eat and too little exercise, conscious of the chilliness in the room and his lack of real interest in sex, and then he says "Let's wait until morning" and we get to sleep about 1:30, exhausted.
DIARY 11501
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11. He set the alarm early, at 6, giving him two hours to get up, but we're both so zonked from the evening before that we just lie there, mutely holding onto each other, and about 7 he gets up and starts making some breakfast for himself, not doing anything for me, and I have some juice before I go, wondering whether to take some of the jello that he made last night and we didn't get a chance to eat. Actually, after he left at 8 I DID eat the jello, getting out at 9:40 and bussing across, feeling uncomfortable in my woolen trousers for the second day, chafing at the upper thighs. There's apple juice for me to drink and lots of rolls to eat, and I sit around waiting for the class to start at 10:20, after the chairs have been moved from the total circle that they started in, into a three-row center with side wings that I sit in to take notes (see DIARY 11493). Lunch from 12:40 to 2:30, and I find a chair and table on the second floor and work, marking, for 1.5 hours, and then get up to write notes. Out for dinner at 5:20, and I mark from 5:25 to 6:25 and then wander over to 1st Avenue to find the Manorah Thai restaurant and order the chicken Thai-style for $4.95, which is tasty (though the breast is hacked through in the Chinese way and I'm served BARELY the meat of a 1/3 chicken), and with the tax and tip it comes to $6.10, dizzily going from $4 to $6! Back to write more at 7:30 and at 7:45 we're into the "play" section of the evening (see DIARY 11496), and I'm leaving building at 10:40, making a dash for the bus, buying a Times, chatting with the girl who drew the butterfly so engrossingly that she gets off at my stop, one beyond hers, and I'm up to Dennis's to look through the Times, tune in on "Saturday Night" from 11:30 to 1, then "Rock Concert" from 1 to 2:30, and read all the Times and finish all the puzzles and just figuring what to do at 4:30 when Dennis walks in, tired, saying that he was delighted with the whole thing, and he doesn't have to be there the next morning until 10. We talk for awhile about how he likes it, he glances through a bit of the paper, then we crawl into bed to cuddle and whisper to each other, though we're neither hard, and sleep.
DIARY 11502
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12. He's up early at 8, showering and exercising and moving about, and I can barely move, setting the alarm at 9 after he leaves at 8:45, then at 9:30, and up to just miss a bus and catch the next one to meet the two fellows who strike me as gay roommates, except one's down from Syracuse for the seminar (and someone else is in from Pittsburgh!). One of the guys dreams of coffee and bagels, and that's JUST what there is, with cream cheese that I breakfast on, and we don't get started until 10:35 (see DIARY 11497). It staggers through to the end, me interested because I throw in something on worm holes and colored quarks, and jot down pithy sayings when she says that the best things are written in few words (see DIARY 11500). Out at 12:55 rather relieved, buy a Chapstick to get change for the bus and a Christmas ball for Fred while waiting for it, so I'm home, after visiting a book sale at 202 Riverside at 92nd, but nothing, at 1:30 with almost nothing left to do for the month. Glance through some of his magazines, do some work from 3:15 to 3:50, but then don't feel like doing ANYTHING and figure I should take a nap, crawling into bed, trying to do some exercises in light-work but not getting very far for distractions, and doze off for a couple of hours of refreshing nap. The radiator in his apartment is going crazy: either it's blasting on and making the place totally overheated and very dry, or it's off and the place is chilly. Wake at 6:30 and decide I feel good enough to walk up to St. John the Divine for the flute concert this evening, getting there at 7 to a line, but they have my name as a member and I pay $3.50 instead of $5. In about 7:30, the concert starts at 8, and Sri Sachdev is far better than Ransom Wilson (see DIARY 11503). Out at 11:35 and walk starving down Broadway to try to find the place around 108th that Arnie was talking about, but couldn't find it, so I stopped in at a coffee shop and had veal parmigiana with awful spinach and too many french fries for $2.75, eating everything until 12:15 and then walking in the cold wind down to Dennis's, not even bothering to shower or shave, and read through some things (not having the energy to work on the index) until he comes in at 3, saying AGAIN that he liked it, and we went to bed with a minimum of kissing.
DIARY 11504
MONDAY, DECEMBER 13. We wake about 10, I laying just a bit, practicing my light-work, and he's awake, we delight in having nothing to do today (though the phone rang once early and once about 9) and I play with his cock with my fingers, and he hasn't come in so long that he gets very hard and sexy just being played with, and though he WANTS me to continue to bring him off, I'm partly afraid he won't be able to come that way and partly desirous of making it last longer, so I suck on him for a bit and then he gets into my mouth, trying again and again until finally he FLOWS into my mouth with an intense groan, saying he's never felt anything like it before, and though I'd been up, his coming was so great that I said I didn't want to spoil it with anything of mine, and that I'd wait for the evening. Out of bed about 12, he calls in to way he'll be in tomorrow, I phone Mrs. Johnson to water the plants and get John to get my mail, reads me what he's been working on, and when we finish talking it's 2:30, so I work from 2:30 to 4:30 while he's taking the laundry out and going for some errand---I guess his singing lesson?---and we finally have breakfast of omelets and green beans at 5:15, the latest in SOME time. I'd worked intermittently through the day, charging the 2 hours because I'd marked 40 pages, but it took me a lot longer elapsed time because he kept bothering me about various captions, writings, or New Yorker jokes. Then I shaved and showered and washed my hair, he dried it with his drier into a huge bouffant pouf, and I got out at 7:40 for Actualism, people still sitting in the hall, and I notice that Allan is VERY MUCH with Matthew, which I feel jealous about, and talk with Hazel for the first time: she's a loner, doesn't like being with anyone, "does it better herself." In about 8:15 for a typical lesson (see DIARY 11505) with two added mudras and the last until January 10. Out at 10:30 and pick up some orange juice for Dennis and me, in to find him grating cheese and I chop lettuce for tacos, I do the handwork on him and he's visibly disappointed that I say he won't be doing it on me. Got to CHANGE that! Then we smoke for the first time in over a week, talking, getting quite high, and we're both VERY hard. He plays and plays and plays, finally coming over my chest, and I'm rock hard for ages, so I whack away at myself STILL HARD, exulting in my confidence, and come with, he says, THREE great gouts that I see as one from my angle, wetting my stomach thoroughly, and I can feel the grits from the long-time-no-come come. Sleep at 2.
DIARY 11506
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14. Wake about 9, remembering vivid dream (see DIARY 11513) and he's up almost immediately, and I get to the table while he works from 9:30 to 1:30, and I mark from 1542 to 1618, going at a fairly good rate, and he's in to the office in the morning to finish typing his blurb while I'm getting chilly because the heat's off. Meet him at the New Yorker at 1:50 to see "Phase IV," a super British film of understatement with GREAT insect photography of ants and mantises and spiders and rats, and a surprise ending where the two of them are welcomed into a sandpit for sex and they're "loosed" on the world at the "start" of "Phase IV," of which I was ants, II was other insects, III was mammals, and IV was people. I leave him watch what even HE says is an artsy-fartsy "Terminal Man," and I work from 4 (phone Arnold and John C, who (and Margaret) ask me to send a letter to them!) to 6, about, doing 1618-1642 and pausing for lots of talk when he gets back about 5:15, and then at 6:15 we're hungry, so he suggests eating in the neighborhood, either At Our Place or Maharajah India. I choose the second, pissing him, I can tell, though he's surprised when I call him on it later, and we're up and walk in and there's Janni sitting there. I, with my coolth, say "Do you work here?" and he says "I own it, since 1959 when it opened." I'm astounded and flabbergasted. We sit and Dennis looks all over the menu and we have the two specials with lobster salan and enjoy all the little goodies and Janni sends over a bottle of wine! Aurora wine yet! Then he introduces me to Valda, who's been in it for three years, and I finally get to talk to someone who's been in it awhile (see DIARY 11507). Leave about 9, saying I'll see him tomorrow, and back to find Dennis still with packing to do and books to look through, and I work from about 9 to 10 with pages up to 1656, and then he suggests we smoke. Sit on the floor and take in lots, start cuddling, he comes after great playing, we go back to the kitchen to have jello and other goodies, then I want to come, so we're back in bed and I play with myself practically soft for a long period of time, he crooning over me, and I'm just DETERMINED to come since I suspect we won't be doing anything tomorrow morning, and I finally shoot, sending a lavaliere of semen across his upper wrist, which he coos at, saying "How marvelous," and I croak something about "a pearl pendant" and we roll over and sleep about 1:30.
DIARY 11508
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15. Alarm goes about 8, he's us and going after about a half an hour and I'm up at 9, feeling groggy and spaced-out, probably from the grass. He only makes toast for breakfast, phones to find that a taxi to the airport would be $14, leaves the place in a mess until I make the bed, wash the last dishes, get his decision that Greg and his girl friend could stay there for $150 if they liked the place, and pack up the stuff that would spoil in his fridge: lettuce, eggs, grated cheese, half-and-half. Downstairs at 9:45 and he explodes when I say he shouldn't have left the note to the mailman outside the box, and then smiles as he hands me his keys and I put it up inside, so the passersby won't see it. Kiss him there, and then out to wait for a cab at West End, then at Broadway and 88th, then down to 86th, on both sides of the street, and I capture one just emptying, and we're down to 79th and he's going across town, and Dennis decides to take it all the way to the airport for "$13-$14." I kiss him goodbye and get down into the subway to feel VERY relieved that THAT'S over. Home about 11 and quickly water the plants and fill the humidifier, put his stuff away, and listen to the 17 phone messages, 9 of them no answers, and phone Eddie, Michael, Rolf, Arnold, Pope, and within about two hours of my being back Susan and BobR call ME. That takes until 1, then, frantic, I start typing cards to finish the box I'd started last Friday from 1 to 3, and then I stop to eat "breakfast" of scrambled eggs and cheese to have SOMETHING in my stomach before the party tonight, and then I shower and wash my hair and shave for the party, and then have no time to type the letter! Don suit and feel pretty good as I'm out in the warm 45° weather at 4:50, getting the mail from John AND getting downstairs to get 11 books from my list from S&S, and lovingly unpack them. DELIGHTFUL! To the White Turkey Restaurant, in FACT the Candlelight that had been closed by typhoid, and it's a surprisingly engrossing evening (see DIARY 11509). Out about 9:30, subway home to sort through the books, read the articles they were wrapped in (after having watched "The Real World" in "Dance and Human History" from 10:10 to 11), and feel tired enough to smoke, get very engrossed in just a few porno shots, and come very feelingly with two rubber bands making my cock just the reddest and hardest for actual MINUTES. Sleep at 1.
DIARY 11511
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16. Wake about 9:30, feeling relaxed, and try some of the orange light, but the phone rings and it's Eddie, who can't talk now, so he has to call back. I work through another series, and then he calls again and tells me about his new job, how much money he owes, how he'll send me $15 on account, and how his camera was stolen two weeks ago by a trick. Then Arnie called and chatted for about half an hour, and then I felt I had to put some order into the apartment: so I made the bed, had some breakfast from the refrigerator that still smelled rotten though I threw out the rotted hamburger yesterday, and happily checked off the books that I got, tempted to retype the page. But I settled for one hour for typing the letter, getting in a LIGHT dig at John for not telling her sooner about the editing, and went out to mail it about 11:30, sad that the mail hadn't come yet. Then sort through the mail from yesterday, putting things away, and then get a call from Bruce to clear me up before he leaves (see DIARY 11510). Then I start to get to tearing apart the cards, but figure I just HAVE to catch up on the diary, and there are so many things to research DURING it: about the Kabala in EB for Androgyny, notes from the flute concert, and then decide that I'm not going out for groceries today so walk down for the mail and look through THAT, phoning Klenett and updating her list of books I want, doing MORE work on that list, then typing until "Star Trek," which turns out to be ALMOST a new one, and then watch "The Goodies" afterward, so there goes 6-7:30, while eating soup that I cooked for lunch, finishing up Dennis's apple cake with one carton of half-and-half, almost spoilt from the rotten meat. Then research Hodson's book, finding it cost $10, looking up others in the Yes catalog, check old diaries to find how often I ate at Maharajah India, add Actualism #5 handwork, and am totally appalled that all the typing to get me up to date takes me to 11:05 pm, even though it IS the whopping sum of 22 pages! Fry up some Spam and warm up the peas and eat dinner while watching "Spies," which doesn't strike me as very good until the BIZARRE end when Numm, the clown who's actually the villain, shoots himself in the head, shouts "Curtain" and falls dead as the audience leaps to its feet applauding as the curtain blacks out on "The End." That goes from 11:30 to 1, then I smoke and jerk off rather quickly to 1:30, then listen to Tubular Bells, fantasizing (see DIARY 11512), and bed at 2 am.
DIARY 11514
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17. Wake about 7:30, surprisingly awake after only 5½ hours sleep, and do some light-work and get out of bed at 8:30 to clean out the humidifier and fertilize the plants and eat breakfast all before 9. Jot down notes for the pages I'd missed while typing all the 22 yesterday (see DIARY 11513), and then watch the final program with a snide Polly Bergen and a stupid Frank Field with John Money, Lionel Tiger, and a mannish Phys. Ed. teacher from Jersey talking about sex changes and chromosome tests for professional and Olympic sports. Then get sucked into the first game of "Concentration" and get down to work on the index at 9:45, sorting out the last 1000 cards, typing the next 1000 cards from pages 1278-1406 (obviously I'll need MORE lines per 1000 pages than THAT), and sort THEM out until 2:30, getting the table all built up and putting 16 boxes of cards lined up on it, really impressive, and this'll be my worktable until I'm finished. Have lunch of soup, then get out for groceries at 3:05-3:40, leaving word with Dick Sime, who doesn't call back, and pleased that John doesn't call, but then try to call HIM at 4 to see if he got the letter, and neither he nor Margaret ANSWER at 4:10. So it looks like I'll be ahead of them AFTER all, since they still have to send in chapter 32 (which I won't get to by Monday, but it'll SOUND good!). Then work from 4 to 8:15 by typing up the thousand cards from pages 1406 to 1513, somewhat better, and filing those into the boxes on the table, finishing my 15,000th card, over TWICE as many as I'd ever done before! Stopped to watch a duplicate of "Star Trek," and they appear to be CHANGING the titles slightly! Then put Dvorak on and hamburger into the broiler and washed dishes and cooked dinner until 9, when I watched a good TV program "Giving Birth: Four Portraits" of a spinal while she SEES but doesn't FEEL the birth; a first-born natural that turns into a Cesarean where the baby's brought out CRYING they did it so fast, a "natural" where the midwife gives a small episiotomy, and the natural TOTALLY that they showed at est, costing $220 where others pay $1200 to $2000. Then from 10 to 10:45 I catch up with these 3 pages, having spent time killing hundreds of white flies. Then shower, first time in two days, and get into bed before midnight to smoke and come after staying VERY hard for a VERY long time (see DIARY 11515) and then get up to eat piles of cookies and listen to Mystic Moods tape and AGAIN bed at 2 am!
DIARY 11516
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18. Wake about 8:20 and try a bit for light-work, but it doesn't work and when next I look at the clock it's 9:25, so I get up and watch the most of "The Land Unknown," finding dinosaurs in a tropical valley 3000 feet below sea level in Antarctica, but it disintegrates quickly into a goony lost-airman-who's-mad plot, and I'm happy enough to turn it off at 10:40 when Rolf calls to say that he's coming over with his French friend, Paul Cazinovia, who's not feeling so good, and they're tearing his ceiling down to repair it. I'd eaten breakfast during the TV show, and they're over about 11 and Rolf leaves quickly to do errands, and I get to marking more of the index from 11:05 to 3:10, when I finish chapter 29 and he's up and around, then talk to him for about an hour while Rolf's phone gives a continuous busy signal, and then get back at 4:10, Rolf rings soon after and comes up to chat with him while I continue the typing I'd started at 4:10, and they leave at 5 while I continue through until just before 6, checking that "Star Trek" is a duplicate. And then eat soup for "lunch" and read some, then check that "Space 1999" is a duplicate too, and get back from 7:10 to 9:05 to finish typing my 16,000th card, and then I type these two pages to 9:35, ready for Xmas cards! Decide it'll go faster if I make all the addresses out first, so I do that, and still feel like going onward, marking them with the combination of green and red markers for a Christmassy look, having decided who to send ALL the 51 cards I'm sending out this year to, with one still sitting around from the box I'd started in 1964 "just in case." Find that I don't know the new Brooklyn addresses of either Paul Bosten or Sergio Cervetti, but get both their new phone numbers by calling their old numbers. Work on and on, writing notes, pasting stamps, and by 1 am I'm totally FINISHED, which makes me feel just great. Put on the hamburger to broil as I take out the cards and drop them into the proper slots at the still-open post office, pick up the Times across the street from the St. George, and get home at 1:15 in time to turn the hamburger and put on the peas. Look through the Times and do most of the puzzle before I'm dropping to sleep at 3 am, and get to bed with NO problem, doing the light-work for about 40 minutes before getting instantly to sleep.
DIARY 11517
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19. Wake about 10 and leisurely finish the Times, having breakfast of cereal with half milk and half half-and-half, then get back to typing the index from 1:10 to 3:10, when I stop to shower and wash my hair and shave to get ready for Fred's, and then work another half-hour from 3:40 to 4:10, and then water the plants and put the Times in a pile for Dennis when he gets back and talk on the phone to Paul and Sergio (giving the address to John, who's put out the balls downstairs on the VERY day that I finally get the wreath up in the hall). Also, Rolf comes over with Paul to return the binoculars, both convinced that he has hepatitis, so I take the sheets off the bed and let it air, not particularly wanting to catch it. Rolf looks at my eyeballs and remarks that they're vaguely yellow to start with and quite bloodshot. What does he expect with me reading all the time? Get out to Fred's about 5, and it's a perfectly dreadful open house (see DIARY 11518), that I'm quite happy to leave at 6, getting back at 6:30 in time to watch "Billy the Kid" and "Les Patineurs" in very posh productions by the American Ballet Theater for "Dance in America" from 6:30 to 7:30. Terry Orr is just about perfect as Billy, and Bujones stars as the skater in green, but it's NOT a very striking ballet, though Ward makes a good partner as the second male, and Tippett tosses his crotch around a lot as Alias. Then get sucked into watching Ozawa conduct the BSO for Berlioz' "Romeo and Juliet" from 7:30 to 9, rather a bore except for a good section 1/2 hour into it and a GREAT finale, with EVERYTHING thrown in. Then finish typing the LAST of the cards through page 1732 from 9 to 10:20, and then NOW is when I get in touch with Paul and talk, figuring to go to his play tomorrow, calling Arnie and finding he's working at Macy's, and then have hamburger and read New York until 12:20, surprisingly late, and work from 12:15 to 2:55 marking more pages, the final large chapter going well, and then AGAIN I'm totally tired. Oh, forgot that I jerked off on arising with a hard-on, and then while watching the ABT, the spiked eggnog that Gene made was at least good enough to get me into that. Did light-work before sleeping again, feeling that it's coming much easier.
DIARY 11519
MONDAY, DECEMBER 20. Wake and get out of bed about 9:45, and directly to the index after calling BobR and stupidly agreeing to be at Dennis's at 6 tomorrow night for HIS convenience. Then work on more marking from 10:05 to 1:35, and John C finally calls and we talk to Margaret about the letter and they agree to essentially everything, still disappointed that I have to say I'll be getting the last pages to them by January 10th. But what's MY delay of 4 DAYS compared to THEIR delay of 8 WEEKS? Then I get to breakfast of cereal and half half-and-half, phone Guy to get no answer and Michael to get agreement for the play tonight, and then down for the mail, LOTS of it, and I go through and sort out the mail that I'd already gotten for Christmas, watched the end of "Yellowstone Park" 2:20-2:30, and things are looking pretty together when I get back to marking at 3:15 to 4:30. Then John calls to say that he'll be bringing back what he's checked of my green marks and I'll give him the next batch for him to work on tonight, and he'll do ANYTHING to see where I live, I guess. Amusedly (and proudly, it IS a great apartment!) move around fixing things up for his entrance, and then sit down and rap off these three pages by 5:10 pm, ready for typing. Get just the first few cards done when John buzzes and comes up at 5:15, exhausted from the subway ride, and looks over the apartment, remarks that I have "nothing gay" showing (and says that I have a picture of his ceiling in his bedroom on the cover of "Great Interiors"), then heat up soup and watch a new title "Spock's Brain" on "Star Trek" for most of the time, and then shave with an electric razor and don't shower and get out at 7 to get to the Lyceum at 7:35 and pick up the three tickets from Paul, and Michael and his Dutch friend Roy are almost on time (7:52 when I said 7:45), and "Your Arm's Too Short to Box with God" is pretty good if they ever get it together (see DIARY 11520). It's over at 10 and I'm home at 10:30 to fry up the last of the Spam and eat that, and work from 10:40 to 12:40 marking---and maybe THEN I scramble some EGGS to eat? instead of the Spam?---and then from 1:15 to 2:15 marking, by which time I'm exhausted enough to get to bed and almost fall asleep while doing light-work, but happy to be doing so much INDEX work.
DIARY 11521
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21. Wake just about 10---actually 9:45 and call Bob to say I just can't go to Dennis's tonight, and he SAYS he understands---and get to marking from 10 to 12, when I stop to watch the second part of the program on the San Diego Zoo while eating breakfast, then mark from 12:35 to 2:05, taking 1/2 hour off from 2 to 2:30 to watch "High Tatras" National Park in Czechoslovakia, full of people who must stay on the paths. Then I'm typing through another 1000 cards from 3:15 to 7, taking off to go down for the mail, not much, and then cook two packets of Goodman's noodle soup (not very good) for lunch at 6, getting another "Star Trek" title, and taking another half-hour away from the index. Then Eddie phoned and said he was coming over for some poppers, and he comes in at 7 and talks about his getting a job as a messenger by going to his employment-agent friend and wanting something from Nichiren Shoshu that he'd been in for two weeks, and he got just what he wanted, although he had to accept $100 off the books rather than the $140 he wanted. I tell him about Actualism, putting off his sales pitch a bit, but not before he'd come out with his prayer book, his beads, and told me about the organization of his altar and the sequence of the prayers, and how he wants his friends (not including me, I guess) to get him a camera for Christmas. He tells about how the Catholic Church shit on him, even to the point of a priest saying he wouldn't absolve him if he came back from sucking cock again, saying it was unnatural and he'd go to Hell. So he left the church (after his family disowned him) and wanted another religion, finally being shakabukued by his landlord, who wanted to do ANYTHING for him and chanted loudly in the apartment below his. Talk on and on, and I chase him out at 8:30, saying he should send ME my first check the day he takes his last shot with the first roll of film in his new camera. Then I work from 8:30 to 10:15, and I'd put in the smoked pork for that amount of time, and settled down to eat dinner while reading a dynamite issue of New York Magazine, and then at 11 I don't feel like doing anything but smoking and jerking off, which I do to GREAT effect (see DIARY 11522), and get to sleep about 1 am, early for a change.
DIARY 11523
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22. Wake about 9, feeling good, and get to the index at 9:10 and mark ALL the ret of the pages that I have by 12, when I watch the program on the Tucson Zoo while eating cereal, and then from 12:30 to 4:15 I type the very end of 1000 cards, sorting those out, and then type a SECOND 1000 cards, stopping at 2 as usual for the program on National Parks, this time about the Bavarian forest in Austria just across from Czechoslovakia (a real rural gap in the Iron Curtain at THAT time), and down for the mail to come up with quite a stock, but thankfully none from anyone that I'd want to send a card BACK to. Then work from 4:15 to 9 on the alphabetization of the SECOND letter (after calling John to see where the extra pages I needed are, and he'll be sending the whole end of it tomorrow), getting through G by the end of the evening. Then at 9 watch the "Christmas Chester Mystery Plays," which delightfully has a naked Adam with pretty bobbling cock right there on my TV screen, and lots of special effects and some fairly whimsical things that do NOT negate the fact that the ROMAN CATHOLIC GOD IS QUITE A SHIT! Get tired of that at 10:15 and get back to work until 11:30, when I stop to watch "Saboteur," and it seems that I saw this part of it, and then that part of it, and then just about the whole THING, and I look through the movie list and it's not there, and look through the diary, and can't find it THERE, and through the datebook and can't find it, so it just slipped through the chinks and I don't like it at ALL. Actually, sat down with the Cosmic Father yesterday and did it twice, and did it once today, too, but feeling rather poorly with it, and yesterday came up with the idea that "I had it but I lost it" (see DIARY 11524), and then reading Scientific American I get a GREAT idea for a story about a "runaway star" (see DIARY 11525). Reheat the pork and eat a goodly bit of it through the movie, and it's been VERY cold and windy outside, so that it's too chilly to think about coming, so at 1:30 I just wash my face and try to ease the VERY sore spot at the back of my right ear from my glasses, and brush my teeth (and ran out of vitamin E today and MUST do shopping) and get to bed at 1:45.
DIARY 11526
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23. Up at 9:45, so I must have needed 8 hours' sleep. Water the plants and feed the humidifier and sit down to work at 10 to 12, merrily alphabetizing box after box on the second letter, working from H to P, 8 boxes, so it took about 4 hours, making out secondary index-stubs that I'll have for any OTHER monstrous index that I do. John called and said that these pages aren't available, but he'd send what he had. When I called back at 1:20 for a question, they'd all gone home. Watched the condescending program about the London Zoo from 12 to 12:30, then checked to see that no program was on at 2, then checked at 2:30 to see that Wolf Trap wasn't the Baryshnikov one, and went down to the mail when the messenger came to get the LAST book from S&S [and NOW check that my list is 20/64; eliminating the top three authors would leave 17/32, the then-top five authors would leave 12/16, the then-top four authors 8/8, then then-top four 3/4, then then-top two 2/2, the ten-top one 1/1---and there goes ANOTHER 10 minutes from my "busy" day!] and look through that, and then stop at 5:40 to try to phone Madge, who invited me to Christmas dinner, and Byron, who hasn't been home, and I eat soup while reading New York, having found "Star Trek" another duplicate, and then called Pope and talked to 7, decided I have to catch up with my pages and did 5 slow pages until 8, watched Doug Henning in some GREAT illusions: making an elephant vanish, reappear, Joey Heatherton in a metal sphere, himself vanish from a flaming cylinder, for an entertaining program. Then at 9 decide I MUST shower (haven't done it since SUNDAY!), and Michael calls to thank me again from him and Roy, his Dutch friend who looks Spanish, and then finish this, the seventh page, at 10:05, the meat cooking. Eat dinner, drink wine (which contributed to the subsequent jerk-off these evenings), and smoke and have ANOTHER grand session (see DIARY 11527) until about 11:45, when I feel hungry enough to get up and eat 3 toasted muffins while watching the VERY trippy middle of "Beauty and the Beast," with flowing curtains, slowed motion, and faces in mantels, arms holding candelabra, dining utensils, and dressing garments. Bed about 1:30, sorry about no light-work.
DIARY 11529
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 24. Wake at 8 and get up soon after, the first TIP of sunlight streaming in the bedroom window at 8:10 from between lowest point of far-east buildings. Light-work nicely (see DIARY 11528), water the plants, send out some bills, put sex stuff away, and do these three pages by 9:50 am! Type cards up to the point I've marked, page 2021, from 10 to 12:15, and then mark the last pages from 12:15 to 12:55 and type the LAST CARDS from 12:55 to 1:30, ending up with 20,923 cards in the first go-round, with more to come with the four pages I'm still missing, which might add as few as 3 cards and as many as 77 (ha!). Then have cereal, and decide that maybe the reason I'm so cold while the thermometer reads 71° inside is that I'm not EATING that much during the day! Then make a grocery list and go out shopping for a cake, and find that Montague Street has the same special that the Key on Henry Street has, so I buy a walnut cake for $3.25 (and it turns out to be AWFUL), then get vitamin E and toothpaste and soup ladle and get groceries, VERY conscious that I haven't gotten anything for Mrs. Johnson, who doesn't seem to be home. Not much in the line of mail, and I get back to do the second-letter alphabetization of R and S between 3:15 and 5:15, and then shower (FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE SUNDAY---no, that was yesterday) and sort through for socks to wash them, and then watch a COMPLETELY NEW "Star Trek," number 77, so I really MUST be coming to the final ones. Byron calls and comes over for a bottle, giving me the clue to call Paul at 7 and say I had to wait for someone to pick up a bottle, but he says everyone's running late, so that's OK. Leave at 7:10 and walk past the Christmas Fantasy of 1st Place, real Italiano Christmas with blinking lights, plastic crèches, candles, choir boys, deer, wreaths, EVERYTHING. Buy a bottle of Taylor champagne from a neighborhood place for $5.68 (so this is a $9 meal!) and get to Paul's, in the basement, with only Billy and Pierre there, and then Hugo appears and we're only five for dinner, except that David comes over about 9:30, shares a joint, and talks a storm, and then everyone leaves at 10:40 for midnight mass and Paul drops me off after a poor evening (see DIARY 11530). I'm in, stoned, and smoke and jerk off and perversely eat a half-bag of chocolate-chip cookies, which I REALLY don't need, and bed about 1 am, tired.
DIARY 11531
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25. Out of bed at 9 and right to the second-letter alphabetization of T-Z until 10:15, and then work on the FINAL editing of A-AM from 10:15 to 2, so it WILL take 4 hours/box for editing, and I've left in 50 paperclips (so I'll need 1000 of them!) for editing that I INSIST on doing anyway, so I'll really have to put in 12+ hours per day. Margo called back to make sure I got her message OK, and I'm to be at HER place, I guess, at 5 at East 44th Street near the UN. She talks of a #7 exit there, but I don't know about one, and I shower and cut myself shaving and type these 2 pages by 3:10. Then dress in my suit and find that it's warm enough out to wear my fancy overcoat without a scarf, and leave about 3:20 to the Lexington subway, which comes right away and I'm STILL reading "The Cyberiad," it seems now for months. Get to 307 E. 44th and am just about to go inside at 3:55 when Margo and friends from the New Hebrides come into the lobby and get more relatives, and then four women crowd into the back of Margo's enormous Buick, so that I can have the front seat with her. We chat about our work, the weather, and get up to Westchester about 5, lowering clouds promising snow. Marsha's husband answers the door and Madge's carrying Michelle, who's a real pest all evening. Werner's fatter than ever, and the Maos look younger than ever, and Mike looks fabulously built with his broad shoulders and narrow hips in a sweat suit-like black outfit with baggy trousers. I stay in the kitchen for the most part, after Werner shows me the house in exhaustive detail and we phone Peg Casey, who lives next door perchance!, to come over. Lots of people are speaking Chinese, Werner's parents look VERY much out of place, though they're cheerful and quiet, and I get a bad feeling from the evening as a whole (see DIARY 11532). Dinner is buffet style with capon, huge ham, yams, eggplant dish, sautéed broccoli, other vegetables, along with champagne to start with, white wine with, and a cognac afterwards. They even unwrap lots of the presents for the two kids, who don't seem to be getting along at all. Relieved to find that Margo's leaving at 9:30, and it's started snowing outside, and we get to Bloomingdales at 10:30, where I catch the BMT and get home to read the Times and work both puzzles, exhausted, by 3 am. Bed without ANYTHING more.
DIARY 11533
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26. Up about 10:30 and work until Camera Three at 11 brings a pretty shoddy "Celebration of the Gospel by Al Carmines" with pretty melodies and icky people. Then back to work on editing the first box of A-Am from 11:30 to 3, taking out 10 minutes for breakfast, finally finishing up the half-and-half with cereal, and then work from 3 to 7 on the second box, An-Az, while taking off 50 minutes to boil up soup and watch the first 20 minutes of "Christmas Chester Mystery Plays" so that I can see Adam's cock again from 6:10 to 6:30. Pleased that the boxes CAN be done in 4 hours instead of 5, but I've been using literally hundreds of paper clips to mark things to check, putting on the left for things I can do now, middle for things to check later, and right of the index card for questions to ask John. Then work from 7 to 9:30 on the B's, Dennis calls from Waikiki!, spreading the single boxes out into two boxes so that I can easily flip the cards to edit them, and it looks like it'll be a successful job, and I'm eternally grateful for Dennis being out of town. But I can feel myself getting heavy from lack of exercise and constant sitting in the chair, and though today's OK in the cleanliness field, later in the week things get pretty bad. Stop at 9:30 to watch "That Was the Year That Was" while eating the last of the smoked pork, but it's not very good, though I do watch it through to the end at 11, and I've decided that since I worked 9.5 hours today already, I won't do anything else so I've had wine with dinner, and then get into bed while the apartment's still warm enough to smoke and jerk off. Since I hadn't come for two days, I was looking forward to coming tonight, and though I got OUT the bidi and popper, I didn't use them, just worked and worked with my cock and the grass and the pornography and the rubber bands and the greatest intensity of feeling to get myself into a grand state, debating for a bit about ejaculating without having an orgasm (since that gets such a high score), but don't get around to doing that: my cock feels so good that I don't want to let it go, just move around under it, feeling enormously good, and shoot more satisfyingly on to my chest, not getting a very good score, but feeling great. To sleep about 1, after eating an inordinate amount of food before sleeping.
DIARY 11534
MONDAY, DECEMBER 27. Wake about 8 and doze until 8:45, and get out of bed to return to box B from 8:55 to 10, finishing in 3.5 hours, which is even better than 4 hours, and then start on the two boxes of C at 10 to 2:15, taking off from 12 to 12:30 to eat cereal for breakfast and watch the West Berlin Zoo, built from scratchy rubble after the war's destruction, and they keep a six-month's supply of food for EVERYTHING in case there's another closing of the border, 250 miles away, where they get all their food. Then jolt to the TV at 2:15 for Nairobi National Park, which seems to be having space problems with too many cars, and down for the mail, lots, but again no new people sending cards that I should have sent to first. Then work from 2:35 to 7:15, stopping to have soup while seeing that I have the "Star Trek" title. Called John in the morning, left word for him to call me, and then when he didn't, call at 4:15 and talk to Margaret, asking about the Dorland's Medical Dictionary that he'd mentioned, and she did the same as he did, express amazement that I don't have a copy of it, but saying that she'll find one for John to send me tomorrow, when he's sure to be in. I'm feeling irritable and put upon: the woman upstairs hasn't left her apartment for what seems like weeks, and I think she's training her cat PURPOSELY to run back and forth above my head. The dog next door barks occasionally, but at least I have the knowledge that it stops quickly. Then finish box D from 7:15 to 8, when I take off to watch "Ballet Shoes" on "Piccadilly Circus," and the three girls are rather charming, Sarah Prince playing Posey, who (if she's the one who IS dancing) just MIGHT be someone special in the field of ballet. Pauline reminds me very much of MANY little girls I'd known (Kathy O'Shea, mainly), and she's a good actress, as the part says she is. Terence Skelton is a marvelously handsome and sexy gray-haired man who comes to live with them WITHOUT getting soupy about wanting to marry the incredibly addle-brained "Guardy" who looks after them, and the arrival of Gum (great-uncle Matthew) at the end DOES strike of deus ex machina, via Karachi. Then work from 9:30 to 10, and that's 10 hours work for the day, so I smoke EARLY and come up with an ANGUISHED come with baby lotion, and it's so straightened that I get 3 enormous globs and two drips at the end; a Record! Bed at 1 after eating many too many muffins and cookies, buttered yet!
DIARY 11535
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28. Wake about 8:30 and do some light-work until 9, but it doesn't feel very good, and then do things like scrub out the clogging humidifier, marvel at how dirty I'm getting and how my beard's growing, since I haven't done anything except brush my teeth and wash my face since Saturday. Some time today I type one page, but I don't remember when, and I'd meant to catch up, too! Water plants, depressed that I've run out of socks and have to wash them, am running out of dishes, and want to get the grass off the floor, since it's dried and I suspect contributing white flies to the hordes that I simply can't be bothered with at the window. I just hope they don't get into the living room again! Work from 9:15 to 11:45, setting up the table for the pages and going through doing a lot of paperclip removing after I finish the Es in 3 hours, a NEW record! John sends back the previous batch and I exchange it with the last batch of green markings that he has to go through, and am perfectly delighted with the Dorlands. It just solves MOST of my terminology problems and is an ENORMOUS help, except that now I can do PROPER editing, which will take longer to do! Stop at noon to watch the Basel Zoo, and they're breeding practically everything, and have a great open-front bird display: no glass! Then continue with the general editing from what I have marked at 12:30 to 9:30, but I took off from 2 to 2:30 for the National Park of Hakone, Izu, and Fuji, down for somewhat less mail, and Greg calls to say he wants to look at Dennis's apartment, so I should give the keys to Arnie. Get my 70th "Star Trek" title while eating the last of the rather good Puree Mongole with Knorr's pea soup and my tomato juice. Then continue editing until 8, when I watch the second part of "Ballet Shoes," until 9:30, not a good crotch in the lot, sadly. Then have down that I work from 9:30 to 10:30 on box F, and THEN is probably when I type the diary page-and-a-half, and then probably talk to Arnie on the phone until 11:20, when [oh, forgot that BobR called today, wanting to come over during his day off on Friday; I said I'd call him Thursday to say] I get back to work from 11:20 to 1:20, exhausting myself enough to get to sleep without smoking or coming, maybe saving up for Bob's coming on Friday? Try light-work, but my mind MEANDERS so much I don't turn off the light until 2 am.
DIARY 11536
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29. Up at 9 and get to the desk at 9:20, feeling heavy and dirty and I've GOT to wash dishes and myself and go for groceries! Work from 9:20 to 12 on box G, talking for 40 minutes to Arnie about his trauma with Macy's, where yesterday he worked for the last day, except that he has a few trips to Mexico to escort in January. Then relive my visit to the Antwerp Zoo, remembering the train station and the Greek Temple on the hill (though I had to be reminded that it was the old aquarium). Breakfast as usual, and then Arnie comes in about 1:50 for the keys to Dennis's for Greg and to bring over my underwear that he bought for me AGES ago, paying me my refund for my pants and pillows along with it. We watch a bit of "The Danube Delta," which looks fascinating, since it's the setting for Blackwood's "The Willows" too, I think. Great birds and dredging and reeds and wilderness. Then 2:30 to 6 on box 1 of H, for 3.5 hours, and I read a list of questions to John that I have to have answered. Have the first of a fairly tasty Lipton's soup with vegetables while watching 20 minutes of a duplicate "Star Trek," then work from 6:20 to 8 on more of H, feeling very dirty when John Woods comes in looking VERY elegant for two bottles of poppers and $10 in cash for a $30 check. Then stop for the night and watch "Belle of Amherst" from 8 to 9:30, and though Julie Harris is very FUNNY and BELIEVABLE as Emily Dickenson, but she has so many things to WEEP about (she DOES seem to have a cold along with it) that it's rather jarring. Also, she seems to be pushing her voice and straining, but she looks the part, playing a woman of 53 at 51 herself. Then from 9:30 to 12 is "Cyrano de Bergerac" with a competent Peter Donat as Cyrano with a nose complete to pores in close-up, an awful Marsha Mason as Roxanne, and a bewhiskered Marc Singer as Christian, with only a marvelous tit showing during the siege of Arras, but he does well enough, with his huge blue eyes, to make me want to watch whatever ACT does. I spot the heroine of "Taming" in the chorus, Hoiby did the music again, and flip to see the name Rick Winter in the list of extras, but I didn't see him. Drank wine during dinner of smelly hamburger tonight, too, and thought to get to sleep at 12:30, but I smoked, felt sexy enough, so up again to come rather quickly and neatly at 1. Jotted a note to BobR: "I can't give it to you the way you want it. I can only give it to you the way it IS." No trouble sleeping then. NO ACTUALISM WORK!
DIARY 11537
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30. Out of bed at 9:10 and call BobR, saying I wouldn't want to say he should come, but he CAN if he keeps it brief, and thankfully he says he'd rather wait until I'm not so preoccupied. To celebrate my new-found time, I exercise for the first time in ages, in front of the filing cabinet because of the table with the index on it, and then shower and shampoo for the first time since Saturday, feeling itchy and dirty and almost PIMPLED from so much dirt. Then shave VERY quickly and effectively, straight down for a rather good job in JUST a minute, and then wash socks, water the plants, and actually harvest the grass and cut down all but the LAST plant in the kitchen, hoping still to get rid of flies. Then watch the last of the zoo series, on the Frankfurt Zoo, also built from scratch after the war, and Grzimek (or whoever) the director is more famous than the zoo itself. Then work from 12:45 to 3:15 to finish the last of the H boxes, down for the mail to get not much, but read it all anyway, and then work on the I-J box from 3:45 to 7:15 (with 20 minutes off to finish the Lipton's and check another "Star Trek" duplicate) in only 3 hours, and then I decide I MUST do the dishes, listening to the Rzewski music for the first time since I taped it, and that takes until 8, taping a tiny bit more of "Sharon's Song" on to the end of reel 75, and then settle down to type these 5 pages by 9:10, happily pleased when Johdet comes up with the Swedish stamps I'd asked for when she got them on a package, and she says she'll save them from letters, too. Swell! Feel VERY relieved: Actualizations even called with a New Year's Eve party tomorrow night, if I want, and I probably don't. How many could say they WORKED New Year's Eve? John sent the pages back today, STILL missing 4 pages from the book. But I'm feeling GREAT that I'm CLEAN and TOGETHER. Then decide to start typing the first index pages, doing 1-16 from 9:10 to 10:40, taking off time to make dinner of the last of the moldering hamburger, drink the last of the acidic orange juice, and have the last of the souring beans with reheating the rotting (this is worse than it actually was, except for the meat) Argentine cannelloni from last Friday. Eat and drink while watching "League of Gentlemen" with a cute Keiron Moore playing "a gay" and Bryan Forbes is screenwriter and IN it as Porthill, whom I can't identify later. Over at 1 and I crawl into warm bed in cold room to do Actualism light-work until 2, then asleep.
DIARY 11539
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31. The last day of the year! Wake about 7:30, then doze until 9:10, and then up to exercise, sort through the pin boxes to try to find the tiny magnifying glass (which might be with the stamps, but the table's in the way) to look at the white cylinder I appear to have scratched from my anus when it itched during light-work last night, and it might be some sort of parasite that I'd killed or it MIGHT be a small cell from the two oranges I ate just before bedtime, too, stuck on my fingers. Time goes by too quickly, and I'm typing these LAST TWO PAGES OF THE YEAR by 10:40! Call Arnie to ask about stationers in Brooklyn Heights and talk nonsense till 11, when I go back to typing pages starting with 17, stop at noon to have hot soup (since I don't have milk left) for lunch and find to my disappointment that the rebroadcast of Zoos doesn't start with the FIRST one, which I missed, but starts with LONDON, which I saw. So the break is from 11:45 to 12:15, and then I type to page 41 till 1:45, when I decide I MUST get out, and it's quite cold and windy (about 20°). The line at the bank isn't so big, I deposit my $1500 from ACC and three others, look for used books and find two, the last of the Evans-Wentz series and a duplicate Sturgeon for 30¢, shop for gifts for Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Gray and find nothing of use, buy meat in the crowded store quickly and get to the JAMMED supermarket to wait in line for a cart, to get around corner, to get to the bread, to get to the checkout lines, and to get to the cashier, even reading while waiting. Also bought 1000 sheets of "second sheets" for $4.32, seemingly a bargain at the far stationery store when the nearer ones were closed, and lug it all home about 3:15, ridiculously long. Things away, back to typing at 3:45, discovering the MARVELOUS trick of taping a runway to the 25-line marker so that I can SEE it rather than MOVING it to see it. Type to page 84 to 7:30, about 12/hour, feeling weary in the shoulders, however. Also cooked eggs for "lunch," about 3:30. Paul calls and might come over at 11:30, I remove more clips from 7:30-10, fixing the place up a bit in case he comes, which he doesn't, and then get to K-L box from 11 to 1:15, taking two minutes out for New Year's (see DIARY 11540), and get into a VERY cold bed without light-work, to sleep about 1:30, discouraged that I DON'T seem to be giving time to the light-work.