1978 2 of 10
DIARY 12710
SUNDAY, JANUARY 29. We wake surprisingly early at 9, and he's up too, hard, and we start playing, and playing, and he gets popper, and he comes grandly on my chest QUITE quickly, and then he lays with me while I jerk off, and we're both surprised to find that it's only 10 am, but his phone rings with a friend ANYWAY. He makes marvelous home fries and scrambled eggs while I read the rest of the Times and do most of the puzzles, and leave at 11:15 while he's watching Irene Worth on Camera Three, his folks still haven't called, and we don't plan to get together for awhile. Home and back to editing from 12:15-3, when I stop to watch "Verna: USO Girl" with a VERY cute Sissy Spacek and a HUMP of a William Hurt, just a DOLL in the face, though pimply of back, though Gallico loads it a bit to have her killed in action and buried from Notre Dame in a worldwide commemoration ceremony. That goes until 4:30, and I'm back to editing until 7, when I watch the beginning of "The Medieval Kings" on Royal Heritage, finding out REALLY that the first kings lived in FRANCE more than they lived in London, until about the 13th century, and then back to editing from 7:40-9, moving into the kitchen with all the manuscript and all the boxes for the final manuscript check, then out to watch the last chapter (13) of "I, Claudius" cleverly starting with him dead, then with a brilliant final image of The Sybil, and then scenes from "The Epic That Never Was," and I'm editing and watching, so I finish watching THAT again, with the story line fresh in mind, and Laughton wasn't THAT good in it, and then back to finishing the cross-checking from 11-3:05, time going fast, oven on to keep warm, and finish by making a total of my hours, putting away all the paperclips, taking out all the sorting aids and condensing the job into 6 boxes which should only take about 30 hours to finish, so I have a clear job ahead of me. Get into bed at 3:10 to try to work on light-work, but I only form Hierarchy and come to an interesting state of NOT THINKING, in which no thoughts come to mind, I've observing myself lying there in a state of non-thinking, and it's like pulling feet out of mud to get the brain working again. Then turn up the heat controls to 3, it seems cold, and fall asleep about 3:30, feeling good to have done so much, earplugs in to sleep late.
DIARY 12711
MONDAY, JANUARY 30. Wake at 9:30 having dreamed of Rick Kleyn of all people, jerking off and shooting COPIOUSLY with a BIG cock, and try light-work, then do something VERY quickly by 10, and up at 10:15 to leave word with Bill Lois, who calls and says he's delighted and will be sending a check right now for the $225 rent, and phone Arnie and talk for about 30 minutes about my refusing the listless Marc Lear, who's having a problem with money and decisions, and type 5 pages by 11:35 am. Water plants and put things away and get to typing the first pages of the pathology index by 11:50, doing 50 pages by 3:25, which is only 14/hour, slow, but there are only about 7500 lines, as I tell Ruth today, and she will call tomorrow to have some of the pages picked up to look at on Wednesday morning. Then make hamburger, go down for the mail, read through New York, and probably talk on the phone for awhile, then get back to the Hepatotoxicity index from 4:50 to 8:30, marking pages 179 to 369, half the remaining, and then decide to call Avi, talking to him about my trip to the islands, and somewhere in here Art Bauman calls to say he'll keep me on his Monopoly list for March, have a good trip. Back to typing pages 179-310 from 9:30 to 11, broiling pork chops, and it turns out that THIS book will take LONGER than anticipated, and WILL there be time to do everything (of course, there will be all the time there is, and I'll do what I do, so there's nothing really to WORRY about, particularly since the time taken in worrying is time taken AWAY from actually doing something). Watch Dick Cavett interviewing Charles Schultz, who's fun, though he doesn't like the name Peanuts, has five kids who are somewhat older by now, and had a dog "Spike" that served as the model for Snoopy, which is the only dog he can draw. Then don't QUITE feel ready for bed, so get back to pages 270-417, marking from 11:45 to 12:45, at which point I DO feel sleepy, so I get into bed and do another quick run-through with light-work, feeling that things are settling in all right, even though I'm not doing exactly what the framework says, I think I'm doing OK. Brush my teeth, which have been bleeding badly lately, and put in earplugs because someone's playing TV loudly downstairs in the bedroom, and go to sleep on my back with great ease, pleased that Dennis's accepting my absence BEFORE my trip.
DIARY 12716
TUESDAY, JANUARY 31. Wake about 7:30 and decidedly do light-work until about 8:30 after lying about for a bit until 7:55, and then decide I have to have my hair washed, so I do it then and decide to shave the underside of my chin, and everyone seems to think it's fine. Get to the Hep index at 9:25 and mark until 10:20, when Art calls, and get LOTS of great notes from him, mainly about Haiti, and start feeling GOOD about the trip. Want to get back to work at 11:30, but then start on the DIARY pages, Arnie calls, I have lunch, and get out at 12:20 for Actualism, not having really done ANYTHING, except phoning the Motor Vehicle Bureau to say I don't need anything except identification. Also, Art may be thinking of letting Dennis have his Manhattan Plaza apartment, but he can't decide now. Get to Actualism at 1 exactly for a GREAT session (see DIARY 12714-12715), and out at 2:35 to subway to Nevins Street station to find Schermerhorn and wait in one line, almost finishing "Relativity," a good book, and then get on another line at 3:30 and get out at 3:50 to walk up Livingston to A&S and buy a humidifier for $34, lug that home via the optician who tries to get my glasses away from the sore spot on my ear, and get home to phone Dennis, at 5, who's coming over this evening, so I hurry and put the laundry away, set up the humidifier, wash the dishes while listening to the trumpet music, and resist the impulse to FINISH reading the page about my former trip to the islands for DIARY 12714, but I HAVE to finish with the diary and get back to the index before Dennis comes! Finish 5 pages by 7:15 pm. Then type 221 cards from pages 310-360, too many, and Dennis comes in at 7:30 and I put on five pork chops and he pulls up his seat for "Coppelia." I drink three glasses of wine and two rather strong sloe screws, and by the time I finish with that I have a marvelous glow of feeling for the IDEA of "Live from Lincoln Center" on TV with ballet, but the ballet ITSELF isn't that perfect (see DIARY 12717). It's over at 10:15, which is good, and I brush my teeth and put things away while Dennis smokes, and then I'm in bed with a very cuddly person, and I'm feeling happy to the point of tears, though my headache the next morning makes me wonder if it WAS worthwhile.
DIARY 12718
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1. Wake about 6:30 to take a LONG time to form hierarchy with a hangover from last night; then Watson's alarm goes for some reason at 6:50, and Dennis's at 7, then he dozes until 7:40, when he showers, I at least get the power ray into Center 1, then up to cut up the last grapefruit and make omelets from 6 eggs to get me down to 7 left, and he leaves about 8:50 to work, and I delay by finishing the pages on the Caribbean trip of 1966 (see DIARY 12713), watering the plants, filling the humidifier, tearing the cards typed last night to find how many there are, and type these two pages, finishing all that by 10:25, no 9 hours work TODAY! Then either I talk on the phone---OH, then proofread the 50 pages typed yesterday for Pathology from 10:30 to 11:45, sending a cover letter, and phone Ruth to send over a messenger to pick it up. THEN get to the Hep index from 11:45 to 12:35, typing up to page 473, then I go down for the mail and look through that until 1, then from 1-2:35 I mark the rest of the pages to 563, then from 3:10 to 4 type them, and then start sorting and editing from 4 to 5:30, when I have to stop to shower and have hamburger for dinner (thinking it's late, but then we don't eat until midnight), and get out at 6:25 after I think Arnold called and talked for awhile, and take some cards along with me to work on at Dennis's. Last one in at 7, and take the last folding chair to the right of Winston. The session is problematical (see DIARY 12719), but I think it's OK, though I Was struck by Michael's talking later about "what came out through your voice." It's 9:15 and I want to see the Nikolais, so I take the subway up, and Dennis is making a peach pie, rolling out the crust with a corduroy-roller, and I teach him how to put the upside-down pie plate on the crust and flip the whole thing over, and he's VERY impressed! Work 10:45-11 at sorting, and "Relay" is not too good on Dennis's set, but it DOES show some nudes, and it WILL be fun to see again, now that I know it's not PORNOGRAPHIC and depends a lot on COLOR. Work from 11-11:50 and he complains about his oven temperatures, then we have refried beans and a GREAT "Monterey Fondue" with green chili peppers, corn, and eggs and cheese making it very LIGHT. He's bought good $1.59 wine, too, which is a kick at last. Eat until 1, feeling good with wine, and then he smokes and gets into his cock after we get into slightly-underdone-crust peach pie, and he works himself into a wonderful hardness and I get hard, too, and he comes without touching, just rubbing against me, and I find it easy to jerk myself off, too, and we get to sleep about 1:30, and I even remembered to wash my face and brush my teeth.
DIARY 12721
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2. Dennis and I both wake before his radio goes on at 7, but we're not turning toward each other until the radio goes on VERY loud downstairs and he had his morning two cups of wake-up coffee. Then he crawled back in bed, playing with himself, getting me hot, and then we turned to the light, he got his popper out, and he sat on me and we both jerked off until I came, and then he slid forward and AGAIN brought himself off by rubbing against my stomach sexually, tweaking his tits. I finished the last bit of the indexing I brought along from 8:40 to 8:50, counting that I had 19 cards discarded, and by that time he'd finished rewarming the beans from last night and made a lovely omelet with chili peppers. When I finished I left, about 9:20, and got home at 10 to get immediately to finishing the sorting from 10 to 2:15, and THEN got immediately to the typing, going and going and going until I hit HEP INDEX - 80, taking just 5 hours to do 60 pages, feeling good about it but sore in the yoke, and then finished up the error page until 8, so that I could keep the manuscript for Rolf's input to an indexing program, and I figured that it was a 32-hour job AND I only have about 23 hours of work left for 3 days, which gives me time for OTHER stuff. Then fill the humidifier which I left off today, water the plants, and put on hamburger while starting to type the day's pages. Confuse the TV listing and want to watch Friday's "Royal Heritage" tonight, but settle for half hour of "World" with a report on TV news that's even more boring than the news: and the NERVE to say that we don't slant our news as much as other countries do! But finish these three pages by 9:45, and remember that I haven't gotten MAIL yet! Down for that and it's nothing, but the mess on the floor exasperates me so I sit down and type 6 copies of a letter to the JOYI/V people about est and get the envelopes together and mail them, then sort through the travel stuff and annotate them for Mom, sending her a letter with three brochure-pieces, then send a check to Rita with a note, pay lots of bills, send lots of checks, put the xeroxes of cartoons into "Humor" in the scrapbook file, and put all letters in "To be answered" file, and get everything cleared up by 11:55, when I get to proofreading the 80 pages, stopping at 1:55 figuring I've worked 32 hours on the whole job, so finish everything but the bill, and get into bed to start working on light-work and fall asleep in the middle about 2:30.
DIARY 12722
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3. Wake about 8:15, surprised to be up so early, but then I start on light-work to get it out of the way, doze, and finally get up at 9:30, still only 7 hours in bed, and call Rita Sheeman at Raven and talk for about half an hour about Martinique, call Faye Levey and talk about other islands, particularly the Yoga Retreat on Nassau, call Lauren to find the job is still $1500 and Schrumpf, who's on vacation, and Laura Terrone, who says she wouldn't DREAM of calling me, and Ruth Adams who says she's still working on my check. Then get back to work typing pages for the PLA index at 11:05, working through until 12:55 when Bill Lois comes over and I show him the ins and outs of the apartment until 1:45, appreciating what I have as compared to what HE has, and then start typing again with the phone pressed up against my shoulder and ear while talking to Bruce Lieber for about an hour, interrupted by his phone-servicing, and we talk about my sex life with some interest (see DIARY 12723). When I finish, I figure that I'd done the equivalent of typing from 1:45 to 3:30, and it's 4 when I ring Springer for two rings and the buzzer goes, and it's the messenger with my check for $2,000! So I thank Ruth through her secretary, dash out unshaven to deposit $2,265 (Springer, Lois, and Bassoff), send a check to Chicago for $920 and change, and buy $800 in traveler's checks by sitting at one desk in the bank, neat, then over to buy vitamins, down for a haircut for $2.75 that's nicely short (marveling at the student who comes in to bitch about everything in general and how the hole in his tooth hurts him in particular, and the black kids who come in to giggle over Playboy and end up looking at pictures of basketball stars, and the June or July 1977 issue had a good article about male multiple orgasms!), pick up ANOTHER 6 JOYI letters from Advocate, mail all my letters, pick up Chinese laundry for $6.41, and get back to put MORE things away, then get back to typing from 6:10 to 8:55, have hamburger while watching the second program of "Royal Heritage" about Hampton Court and St. James, talk to Dennis, then finish typing 100 index pages from 10:25 to 11:25 and take another 25 minutes transcribing the times into the Money-job book, then feel tired enough not to proofread, figuring I have about 17 hours left for two days, pretty good, and get into bed at 12:15 and work through light-work fairly well until about 1 am, when I drift off to sleep before finishing, so I can only assume the Immortal accepts whatever happens, probably finishing it itself.
DIARY 12726
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4. Wake about 7:50 with the memory of a dream (see DIARY 12725) and get out of bed about 8:30 to shit and finish another New Yorker after going through a WHOLE session of light-work for a change, and then get to typing these 5 pages by 8:50, hoping I'm not disturbing Saturday sleepers, end at 9:30. Then type pages 151-200 from 9:30 to 12:35, back up to 16/hour, and wash the socks that I'd put in to soak so long ago. Then get back to typing at 1:40 and type until 3:08, when Arnold or someone calls, and then resume at 3:22 and type to page 233 till 3:55, at which point I'm making so many mistakes that it's just not worthwhile continuing. Then proofread pages 51-150 from 3:55 to 6:35, rather slow because the limiting factor is the moisture on the fingers that separate the cards for checking. Also finding errors in the cards, so I'll have some checking to do after I've typed the whole thing. OH, it was DENNIS who called then, saying that Rick and Bob and he were going to "PS Your Cat Is Dead" at 7 and would meet me (over my complaining body) at the Promenade Theater at 9:15 for dinner. So I PROBABLY had some hamburger for lunch during the 12:35-1:40 sock-break. Then decide the worst thing is not knowing how much material I have to read on the Caribbean, so I look through and find everything and look through it all, and something goes "pop" and I find myself not wanting to take anything, getting into a strange mental state of affairs over it (see DIARY 12727). Shower and shave and get ready to leave by 7:55, so I type 8 more pages to 241 to 8:30, and then leave, looking at people on the subway, walk up to 76th and the Promenade by 9:15, but it's not over yet so I read a Times Travel article about the "First" borns who have to plan everything out when traveling, and then they're out loving the play and we're down to 68th to the Milestone to wait outside while Dennis and I go get wine and argue about charging each of them $1 for their share of a $3.24 wine, and we're in for a good meal, the shrimp scampi marvelously garlicky, my beer-batter shrimp in orange sauce just SUPER, and I'd had the chicken parmesan October 8, but had forgotten it. Out about 11:30 in the VERY cold, bus to Dennis's, buy Times, but when I crawl into bed he seems to think that's the end of it, crawls in with me, and we both go to sleep, me using light-work to ward off the flight fears, successfully.
DIARY 12728
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5. I'm up just before the alarm goes off at 8:30, and Dennis is rather quickly up to make coffee and get into the day, so we don't have sex NOW, either, with is OK from MY sexuality but not OK from HIS sexuality and saying goodbye for three weeks. I very quickly go through the Times, though I mark the TV section like always, and he warms up 2/3 of the peach pie (which overheats and sticks to the bottom of the dish) and the rest of the Monterey soufflé, which are both good, and then I shower and get out at 10:30 to find the day rather surprisingly warm-feeling at 17, probably after being in Dennis's over-hot apartment all night, so I walk down Broadway to watch people all bundled up, and see someone going down Columbus with SUCH sexy legs in tight jeans and thick calves that I actually follow him down to the Cantina Restaurant and study the menu in the window to try to get a glimpse of him. VERY sexy. Others sexy on the street, and I'm up to Actualism at 10:55 for a FABULOUS session (see DIARY 12729). Out at 12:45 and when I see that no one's watching people deposit their transfers in the box, I flash at it and keep mine for the return trip, and get down to Joan's at 1:10 to be told to wait 5 minutes, and she buzzes me up at 1:25, then gives me a wheat muffin (too strong) with sesame butter (overwhelmed by the wheat) and butter and honey, and rose hips tea, and we go through her letters and she seems VERY scattered, but she finally seems to understand syllables versus words, and we have a session, talking about lots of things (see DIARY 12732). Out at 4:45, disgusted, and get a subway home by 5:10, phoning Arnie, putting things away, and watering plants, and get to typing the REST of the pages from 5:40 to 8:25, when something ELSE dawns on me (see DIARY 12733). Then start re-editing and un-paperclipping until 9:45, when Dennis comes at 10:30 I'm proofreading and he's hungry, so I put on the last hamburger and last pork chops and last corn, proofread until 11:30, then decide that's IT for the night and have sloe screws, getting him nicely drunk, and then stoned VERY nicely as he smokes and smokes as I dash around finishing things, helping him help me vacuum, among other things, and then we get started SLOW in sex but he's SO stoned (and horny, I guess) that he comes VERY quickly and smoothly on my stomach, then clasps me until I shoot very quickly, stringing those translucent plastic beads along my arm that we play with until I wipe them off, and to sleep at 12:40, playing with ideas about flight-delay (see DIARY 12734).
DIARY 12735
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6. Wake through the night (see DIARY 12734) and get out of bed at 5:50 to start the last batch of proofreading, and even get through the alphabetization check by 7:40, which is good, since there was a lot wrong with it. Then stop Dennis from getting out of bed, then let him out to put on coffee, and I get the poppers, and we get into jerking off and he eggs me on until I come, and then he uses my come on his cock to whip it into a white foam and then he bestrides me to show off and shoot again, and then groans that he HAS to get to work. He showers while I finish the last of the index work, then make neat-looking omelets for breakfast with the toast that he brought from his place, and he leaves with the index at 9:15, and I phone Eastern to find that the flight is cancelled. Spend the ENTIRE day chatting joyfully on the phone with Azak, Michael, Mary, Arnie, Pope, Eddie, Bruce, Arnie again, Dennis, and Azak again, then start typing pages after doing dishes and hunting for, but not finding, vacuum cleaner bags, and finding that the FUSE burnt out on the hi-fi set for the speaker, so fix THAT, and then make the bed, get a call from Bill Lois who's OK with everything, and Eastern says they'll get in touch with me, Pope invites me over for Puerto Rican movies tonight, Arnie afterwards for dinner, and I go out to find the bank AGAIN closed, a letter in the PO box from SOHO for est, and buy hamburger which I'm hungry enough to eat at 3:15, and then get to finishing these 9 pages by 4:50, reminding myself to do the sheet for Actualism now. Do that sheet and a few other odds and ends, get to Arnie's with wine so that he can season his onion soup, watch Pope's films abut La Concha and his lover and Parguera and El Yunque, and then over to Arnie's for onion soup and chicken and great cheesecake that he gives me a quarter of for me and Dennis that I forget about but that's still good after I get back. Drink wine to feel good, then back to clear up everything but packing and studying for the trip, feeling just great about the delay. Pleased to be caught up with the diary but sorry NOW that I DIDN'T HAVE A CHANCE to catch up with the REST of the days before I left, since I barely remember what happened now on March 3, when I'm trying to close the gap between this date and current date. Then I'm delighted to find that I started my journal with TUESDAY!
DIARY 12
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7. (9:15 am Wednesday, waiting at High Street for Azak): TRIP JOURNAL: Yesterday finished super: kept adding to my stack and list of things to pack, kept going through information on the Caribbean (9:18 train comes, no Azak) and putting notes and places and things in a little notebook I'd made with tab-edges in a spiral binder. Phone ACC and Springer and they were both closed. Dennis, at work, said he had a fabulous time last night. At 2:40 Eastern says all flights cancelled tonight, that Azak and I are reserved on the 12:05 flight tomorrow, and I scream and he calls Supervisor and says we CAN stay in San Juan and return, due to circumstances, with his supervisor's name at routing bottom for confirmation. Call Azak at 3:20 and he debates coming here tonight, but doesn't. I continue sorting through stuff and Dennis buzzes at 6:50 (Byron comes over for poppers, no mail delivery). We drink and talk to 7:45, then get out (9:24: CC subway passes?) to find sidewalks and streets plowed and pretty clear, and try By George Restaurant, Italian, and he has to borrow $5 (the $5 that I got from Byron?) (9:26: A, clearly marked to Lefferts, passes) (9:28: ANOTHER Lefferts passes! Hope they have some LEFT!) for his very dry brachiole (stew-beef fragments under tomato sauce) and I have pretty good veal scaloppini Sorrentino with eggplant and ham and mozzarella and brown salty spice sauce. Dennis doesn't care for the place, despite humpy people. Home at 9 to watch start of "Hustle," which looks awful despite (because of?) Burt Reynolds and Catherine Deneuve, and we drink and talk and get to bed at 10:15 for him to smoke and come VERY quickly and I jerk off QUITE limp, just so that I'll have a good enough fatigue to get to sleep, and just able to form hierarchy before I drop off to sleep about 11:30, not even that certain that we're getting off the next day, so I can't even count the hours since I don't know how many hours there are until the flight, but I'm pleased that I'm not worrying, because there'd be three sleepless nights, which I couldn't handle in any way. Wake about 5:30, then again about 6:10, and do a QUICK session from 6:40 to 7, feeling GOOD about FLYING, but worried about PACKING, the last thing for me to do for the trip.
DIARY 12739
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8. Out of bed at 6:50 to see no snow falling, wake him, then he showers quickly and I finish emptying drawers and closets for Bill, then call Azak at 7:40 having heard from Carey that they're only putting on ONE bus every HOUR from East Side, and they have no IDEA how long it'll take, and Eastern says it's still GOING at noon. (9:35 train and STILL no Azak---it SHOULD have been!). No snow falling (where's 1-3 inches MORE that was predicted?), and the SUN comes out. I shower and shave and start packing with a frenzy, and Azak calls at 8:30 and says we meet at front of High Street train at 9:10-9:30, and I say we wait for each other. I dress in jeans, blue shoes, red pullover, jacket, and rain jacket, jacket sticking out below, and Dennis agrees I look tacky. NOTHING for breakfast depressed me because I FORGOT about it, and he studies French while I finish packing at 8:45, deciding to take TWO shoulder bags, Swissair empty now. Out relieved to find the sidewalks QUITE cleared, so shoes are OK, slip rent check under door, and take phone numbers for calling at airport. Eat at corner place and bacon omelet goes down OK, but I leave Dennis at 9:05 finishing his hash. Down to platform and start writing---and the NEXT train at 9:40 contains Azak. Get on and find he's forgotten 1) his pills, 2) his license, 3) to pay his subordinates, 4) a jacket. Oh well. Ride slowly to Lefferts at 10:15 and then down to wait for bus. Most of the streets are still snowed in, but the main drags are VERY clear. Bus Q-10 comes quick and we stand from 10:20 to 10:30, then nice ride to street before Eastern at 10:50, and in to LONG lines that we find a SHORT one of, and check in with a Greek at 11:05. Phone Bill's service, leave word for Michael, and price Polaroids before getting on a line at 11:30 and getting onto plane at 11:45, noticing that the airport will NOT be open before noon, so the only flight that may leave BEFORE us is the boarding flight to Miami that had been scheduled at 11. Even at 11:50 stewardess hopes we get up on time. Read guidebooks until 12:45 announcement of departure with 3 hour 10 minute flight. Start MOVING back at 1:11, at last, Now at (change 1 hour to PR time) 2:39, a Concorde ahead of us.
Caribbean trip from 2/8-3/1/78 can be found in TRAVEL section of website.
DIARY 12791
THURSDAY, MARCH 2. I wake at 6:30 and try light-work but it doesn't seem to want to work, so I cuddle against him at 6:45 and we both come again by the time the alarm rings to get him up at 7:15. He showers and the tub's still very bad, we end up having both pieces of pizza each for breakfast, since there's nothing much else in the house, and I'd called Dana last night to find the schedule for this evening. He gets out about 9:15, I get back to reading the mail, today's with a duplicate mailbox key that I find, and then start going through New Yorks and Soho Newses until about 12, when I've left work with Susan, who calls back to say Adam's dying of cancer. Joan Ann who calls me only Friday to say she hopes to be finished by Tuesday, Steve Abramson who puts me onto Margaret who has another index for me, and I get out at 12 with a mail-window slip that turns out to be my moneyless WALLET from months ago, and I get over 50 letters for the JO ad, and I now HAVE to have a JOYI account, and buy some groceries to have something to eat, but later in the evening settle down with the rest of the potato chips that he'd left, guzzling them, and do more reading after opening the letters and sorting the money from the checks from the deadheads. Come with Stan film because I felt so horny! Showered about 3 pm and washed my hair, and then before having time for typing have to leave about 4, after talking to Michael about Caribbean AND about Pan Am, and get to Dennis's to pick up the tickets for tonight and continue up to Dana's by 5:40, he's still not dressed, and we three have salad and chili and wine until 6:55, when Dennis comes to gobble down salad and get into car to eat chili and drink wine on way to Paper Mill Playhouse, the State Theater of New Jersey, for a pretty sad Noel Coward: "Fallen Angels" with a smarmy Sandy Dennis and a studied, artificial Jean Marsh and reasonably good guys for a drawn-out play that's over at 11:30 that I can barely keep my eyes open for. Literally nap on Dennis's lap while we get driven to his house about 12, and up to brush teeth and undress and get into bed in the over-heated, over-dry apartment and apologize for being so sleepy, and fall right off to sleep about 12:15, after placing the replacement watch Dennis got me from the watch-repair shop who's charging $31.50 to clean and repair my Omega. Rats.
DIARY 12792
FRIDAY, MARCH 3. Wake before alarm goes at 7, and up at 7:10 to start going through his stack of Times, and he's made good whole wheat bread which we have toasted with his scrambled eggs and orange juice, and I keep going through the Times until I finish the entire stack by 10:20, phoning Dennis Sillari to say I'll be late, and dress and take papers down as it's starting to snow AGAIN, and they're predicting 6-8 inches AGAIN. To see Susan at 10:50 and then into Dennis's and talk to Nick Falletta until 12:15 getting the specs for the Language Basics + series of readers, and then phone Joan Ann to find her still not answering and get home about 1:15. Still feeling VERY horny (and the blue jeans on the subways have been particularly appealing after my sexless trip), so I put on TOMMY and come again very nicely with poppers and rubber bands and brandy, and then read more mail and junk and play back the messages and leave word with Azak and put on hamburger and phone Don Maloof and chat about his changes and new lover and how we'll have to see each other, and at 3:10 I remember my hamburger and have that while reading more Sohos, then look in detail at the map for the Pan Am plan and come up with the ONLY 11-stop itinerary that I'd consider from their map: Honolulu-Guam-New Delhi-Teheran-Istanbul-(overland)-Bucharest-Budapest-Prague-Frankfort-Berlin-London-NYC. Talk to Mary and Pan Am and Azak about it, and then decide I MUST get to typing some of the pages, so I settle down at 5:30 and finish these last four pages (to current) by 6:20, ready to start typing notes. Type 3 pages before my fingers feel totally incompetent, and then take up more reading until my eyes become quite sore, so I switch off to other reading until I watch "Royal Heritage" from 9-10, feeling quite sleepy, but I read some more of what's left until I find myself literally with my eyes closing, so I get into bed about 11 and fall asleep, wondering if the pressures of all the things I feel I have to do are building up and exhausting me with the mere THOUGHT of what I have to do. Wanted to watch "Lust for Evil" on channel 13 at 11:30, but just couldn't stay awake for it. It's been snowing AGAIN through the day, covering up the blackness, which is nice.
DIARY 12793
SATURDAY, MARCH 4. Look at my watch to read 6:40, but then find at 8 that the watch had stopped. Do a complete light-work session for the first time in AGES until 8:40, then get up and broil a hamburger for breakfast after a good shit from all the carrots I ate last night, followed by two scrambled eggs. Exercise at last. Get the humidifier started again, bring EB up to date with the places I've traveled to, read some more of the magazines to get rid of them, and down for the mail to finish with that for the day. Phone Joe Easter and Avi (and Bob Rosinek phoned yesterday and talked, too), saying not much of anything, and talk to Bruce Lieber between 11 and 11:40, and then popped popcorn while watching a good cartoon on "Magical Mystical Physical Mystery Tour" through Uncle Carl by Depattie-Freling. That goes until 1, sit and watch some after that, but decide I MUST get to typing the diary pages, so I do lots of them until I stop to read for awhile for relief, then Dennis buzzes about 3:30 and we chat, then he goes out and I continue typing, and he's back about 5:20 and we debate what to do, and I come up with most of the questions for the JOYI questionnaire (see DIARY 12794) until 6:15, then finish this page to date for a total of 21 pages in all by 6:25, a treat! Out to dinner to Bilqis, because he says it's cold out, and it does seem to be, though the streets are fairly cleared of their new four inches of snow, bringing the city total to 49.2 inches this year, and we have mediocre combination seafood for him and stuffed filet of sole for me until about 7:30, but the quart of Chablis for $4 makes the meal and the stonedness, and we buy two Timeses and get home to watch part of "Grand Ole Opry" on channel 13 until about 9, drinking lots of liquors, and then he smokes and we get to bed for a hard-breathing, cock-oriented, popper-ridden, rubber band-bound come for both of us that's quite exhausting, and he leaves at 10:15 to get back to his dogs. I fix up some things around the apartment until about 11, then decide that I MUST exercise for the second time, and do so, though I'm too stoned to appreciate it, and then fall into bed, having brushed my teeth about 4 times today, about 11:15 without even THINKING of doing light-work.
DIARY 12795
SUNDAY, MARCH 5. Wake and lie there thinking, and when I look at the clock it's 8:45, so I've slept something like 9 hours, feeling better for it, and up to decide I can't stand the mess in the apartment any longer, so I water plants, unpack the last of the baggage, gather the JOYI information and the trip souvenirs onto one grand pile on the study drawers, combine all the do lists that I'd come up with into one big one, throw away all the mail that I don't pile up for Dennis to read when he comes back, finish with all the newspapers and magazines, and by 11 watch "Filmmakers of Senegal," rather a bore, on Camera Three, Englander again, and pluck all the dead leaves off the philodendron and the purple passion, then have a hamburger after exercising for the third time this month, feeling good about it, and brush my teeth and put away all the utensils from the trip and wash the dishes, finally getting to these diary pages by 3:30, figuring it IS more important than indexing, and depressed about Joan Ann's questions at 11 after Dennis left for Dana's. Continue typing through the day, finishing transcribing the notes from the trip and even finding pages to type the trip summary on (see DIARY 12782-12783), and typing a capping page for an island summary (see DIARY 12790). Renumber all these pages, and only took time off to talk to Rolf who called and talked from 8:15 to 9 about my trip, his trip to Vermont, and the fact that Asbestos isn't doing much of anything, so he can't afford to travel. The radiator is going so strongly it seems the place is over-hot most of the time. TRIP DIARY typed today was 12760-12787 plus 12790, for a total of 29 pages by 9:50! Take a quick shower to wash my grimy hair and use up the last of one bottle of shampoo, while broiling a hamburger, and watch "The Two Ronnies," sort of a Monty Python, from 10:15-10:40, then a NEW old Monty Python, talking to Arnold in the interim, then watch a FASCINATING "The Prisoner," most intelligent, from 11:15-12:15, and then sit through, though sleepy, with "The Great Wine Revolution" on Nova to 1:15, and then do a half-hour of light-work before watching "Chariots of the Gods" from 1970, until 3:30 am, the goodness of the photography keeping me awake (see DIARY 12796), and then COLLAPSE IN SLEEP.
DIARY 12797
MONDAY, MARCH 6. Wake at 9:15, surprisingly awake with less than 6 hours' sleep, and think to do light-work, but I have to shit and I start reading New York, so I make the bed and do light-work for 15 minutes between 9:45 and 10, then watch the first hour of "Harlow," not that bad, from 10-11, then listen to my messages and phone Dennis and Michael, asking for the $89 roundtrip information to Freeport, and then look up information from "Chariot of the Gods" (see DIARY 12796), and type these two pages (called Ruth Adams) by 11:50! Get out the Language Basics +, level 3 index and mark the first 116 pages in the 70 minutes between 11:55 and 1:15, taking out ten minutes to talk to Joan Ann, who's not going to have the letters finished before MONDAY of next week, so I don't think I'll be working with HER again. Then exercise, feeling tired doing it, before having hamburger for brunch and reading the mail, and then get back to mark the rest of the 300 pages and phone Nick to ask lots of questions from 2:35 to 4:35, figuring I might make as much as $25/hour on this job. Also I don't have to worry if it goes over the 8 pages, he'll look at the complete index and cut it later, and it'll be fine if I get it in on Thursday, which will fit in with lunch with Susan. Then Avi calls and tells me about his $55,000 co-op on 75th for $100/month maintenance and $319/month mortgage payment which will require about $115,000 from him over a period of 30 years! But he's pleased with it. Then type 438 cards from 4:55 to 6:30, and Azak calls to say that dinner will be delayed, and I've already told Dennis that there's no room for him, so he doesn't want to come just for dessert, and I sort about half the cards from 6:35 to 7:30, when I stop to shower and shave until 8---actually NOT showering, only shaving, and get there about 8:45 to find his distant cousin Stefan and his pretty wife Allegra there already, and we chat about the trip while Azak prepared the tomato and cucumber salad, the TINY amount of cream of celery soup, the overdone-but-to-my-taste filets with dilled butter, and lots of wine and Pernod and pictures of their daughter until 12:15, when I phone Dennis to say there's no TIME for me to get to his place, and I leave at 12:45 with the two books returned at last, to get home to try smoking on a cigar, which doesn't leave me high, and I come by 2, but I'm thinking about the questionnaire, and add DOZENS of questions between 2 and 3:25 am, listening to records on headphones.
DIARY 12802
TUESDAY, MARCH 7. Wake WITHOUT alarm JUST at 10, after only 6.5 hours' sleep again, and watch the second hour of "Harlow," not as good as the first, and they severely edited one of the scenes that they're showing more fully now. Then get back to sort the rest of the index from 11:05 to 12:40, and am left with only 332 cards, so I might have to stretch them to make the 500 lines, and then Arnold calls and we talk about Azak and other people, and then I get back to type the first 10 pages from 1:45 to 2:35, and it seems it will run VERY long, and then Winston and his wife Linda call to say they'd been going to Bermuda and didn't know anything about it when they got my CARD from Bermuda, so I get out stuff to take them tomorrow at class, and didn't really have time for light-work today, and exercising seems to have gone by the boards, too. Dennis phones and says he wants to see "Furtivos" (The Poachers) tonight, so since he says he's determined, I agree to meet him there at 6:30. Around this time I just HAVE to do the dishes, so I guess it's this afternoon, and water the plants and get the humidifier going, and still have lots to catch up with in the apartment, but things ARE getting done. Shower and wash my hair, the tub almost stopped completely, and by then it's time to get out at 5:45 and meet him at 6:30, feeling hungry already, and the Cinema Studio is almost empty and I don't care for the movie at all, but he likes the mother, the incest theme, and agrees that the girl is just dreadful and the boy rather problematic. To his place about 8:30 and he starts on a chicken dish as I read through the article on Barbara Lea, and from the sketch she's OBVIOUSLY the woman in my Actualism class. Read more of the New Yorkers as he dawdles over dinner, and he'd bought some good Rioja wine for dinner for $2 and that made me nice and high, so we went to bed and got into his cock in some detail, and I got very hard but had to BEAR down on my cock SO hard to come that the orgasm just felt like the continuity of the outrageous pressures I was putting onto my cockhead sides, and we fell asleep just as we were in his over-heated, over-dry apartment, to wake feeling steamed and caked about 3 am, to drink water and get back to sleep.
DIARY 12803
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8. He gets up before the alarm goes at 7, and I'm up to read through more of the New Yorkers while he makes a tiny breakfast of a cheese omelet with his bread toasted, and I get off the subway about 9:30 to get to the bank and take out a check for $1,244, the largest ever, for my checking account, buy meat, and get home at 10 to watch "Harlow" until 11, then get down to the hardware store to get vacuum cleaner bags and a bottle of Liquid Plumber for the tub, get two packs of white paper for a sale price of $2.95 for 500 sheets, get five sheets of gummed envelope labels for 25 apiece, and then had stopped at the library to pick up a record to have a casing for the stamps that I bought at the post office, and pick up another large batch of JOYI mail. Fumble all the stuff back to pick up the laundry for $1.76 that Bill left at the heights Hand Laundry, and pick up a huge index for Raven, feeling VERY loaded down with STUFF to do. Back to finish typing the index from 11:55 to 1, 660 lines being highly over-length, and have hamburger while watching Katherine Hepburn being shamelessly feminine and illogical while chasing Cary Grant, causing his famous leap into the air with her bathrobe on, shouting "Because I suddenly went GAY" when the aunt asks why he's wearing such a get-up. That's over at 3 and I get back to the JOYI questions (see DIARY 12794) to type up TWO sheets of draft for the JOYI questionnaire (see DIARY 12789-12799), and then go right ahead and type the final copies of it (see DIARY 12800-12801). That takes me until 6:25, and I didn't have time to watch "On the Waterfront," which I'd wanted to, and Michael called to say the LAST flight to Freeport for $89 was YESTERDAY! Then proofread the index from 6:25-7:10, going over 12 hours so it's not $25/hour, and then shower and get out to Actualism to chat about the trip, get another power ray (see DIARY 12804), be amused that Barbara Lea isn't there, and get to Dennis's at 10:30 with a bottle of Zeller Schwarze Katz, which I like and he doesn't, and Egri Bikaver, two of my favorites. He cooks and cooks a lovely onion-mushroom soup-chicken dish until about 11:55, and then we eat, have wine, and he seems not to want to play, but I get into his cock and he comes up and turns on the light and smokes some and has poppers and he comes all over me, and I do myself dry to come nicely, and we fall into a well-positioned sleep about 1 am, having used his air conditioner to cool off the place.
DIARY 12805
THURSDAY, MARCH 9. Up earlier to the sound of a loud radio from below, and Dennis found a half-gallon of milk free, in his shopping bag yesterday, so we have 100% natural cereal with milk and his toast for breakfast, and I continue reading New Yorkers, finishing most of them by 10, when I watch the last episode of "Harlow," very poor, she dies of pneumonia after lying on the beach after an all-night sex session, so the story would say, and I think that Mary Mayo has a VERY masculine voice singing "Harlow" at the end and find that it's Bobby Vinton. Out about 11:15 with the index, and Nick is still busy when I get there at 11:50, so Susan lets me xerox, and I do 70 pages of each, feeling GREAT, and when he's STILL delayed go back and do 50 MORE, feeling even GREATER, and right AFTER that it runs out of paper. Also do the article on Maxim's and the cartoon of the warring sky-signs, which she loves. Meet with Nick from 12:30 to 1:30, and get books 1 and 4 from a more-than-ever sexy Dennis Sillari, and Susan has gone out for hamburgers which we eat while she reads my island list. Leave at 2:30 and just feel like a movie, so I walk down to 42nd Street where the ONLY thing playing is "Super-Fly," which ASSUMES that whitey forces niggers into lives of crimes, with great hoots of glee whenever a white police commissioner's son is called a faggot, and "Saturday Night Fever," which is NOT flattering to John Travolta's face and VERY flattering to his body, which isn't that nice, and HE can do no wrong: woman's tears or brother's complaints are all wrong, he's all right. And it's surely clear that he CAN'T just "be friends" with his woman-friend, it'll get into bed VERY quickly. Phone Dennis, who's sad I'm seeing it, and he can't decide what to do this evening, and when I get home I find "Giselle" is on, so he won't come over. I'm home at 6:30 and type out address labels (also typed a letter to the Advocate and to Edward Moulton-Barrett yesterday) for the letters, and begin putting them on, but stop to watch Frank Augustyn and Karen Kain in "Giselle" (see DIARY 12806) which is pretty interesting, drinking 4 glasses of wine with my DELICIOUS roast pork, and Arnie calls at 12 and talks to 1:45 while I stamp, return-label, and mailing-label, and stuff 75 envelopes for mailing tomorrow, feeling GREAT about that.
DIARY 12807
FRIDAY, MARCH 10. Up about 8:45 and put things away from yesterday, then sit down and do light-work (to make up for yesterday, too) with determination: forming TPH and lighting the power ray from 10:10 to 10:40, then finishing the rest of it by 11, interrupting in the middle for Eddie to call, saying he liked PR so much he's thinking of moving back there in September to go to college free, thrilled that his sister, married to Spain's foremost comedian with his own TV show, just bought a house in Madrid for his father, who's very sick but now a GREAT CLOSE friend of Eddie's, and his stepmother. Rolf called in the afternoon to talk at great length about Asbestos, now up to 1 3/8 on good days, and he might even fill out a JOYI questionnaire. Do a couple of phone calls to the Avalon when Arnie calls about "The Fury" preview there tonight, and out at 1 to get 201 forms from 44 Court Street notarized with a rubber stamp for $2.80, a Business Certificate for $25 at the County Clerk's office, and two copies for $8, one for Manufacturer's Hanover Trust, where a dizzy lady opens my JOYI account for $68 by 2:40, and I'm home to have hamburger and talk to Dennis about the movie and to Nick, who says I have to call on Monday about the index cutting, since they've gotten more characters per line. I've mailed 83 JOYIs today, counting the 8 I picked up at the PO today while mailing the first 75, with other letters, and got "Clobber" for the tub when Liquid Plumber didn't work, but THAT didn't work either. Phoned Soho, who said she'd check about my ad and phone me on Monday with reruns, and then out at 5 to get to the Avalon at 5:45 and sit through the end of "The Turning Point," not the best, and then see it again from 6:15 to 8:20 with Dennis, who liked it AGAIN, and then "The Fury," which I thought was neat and he HATED until 10:30 (see DIARY 12808) and home at 11:25 to fry pork because he's so hungry, and then he goes to sleep while I shower until 12:30, and then watch "Lady in a Cage" with a bitchy Olivia deHavilland and a dark-haired, hairy-chested (dark) first movie for James Caan as a crud, and EVERYONE in the film was SO ugly that it was unbelievable, though she finally went out of her mind when the electricity went on, and I stagger into bed at 2:30, waking Dennis who's put his electric blanket too high and thrown off all the covers to get away from it, and I didn't think he remembered the next morning.
DIARY 12809
SATURDAY, MARCH 11. Dennis is up at 9 and directly into the bathroom to shave and shower, so I fry up ham and onions for a huge omelet which he gulps down before dashing off at 10 for a hair-cutting appointment, saying we'll fend for ourselves for dinner and he'll be seeing Paolo Soleri and I'll be seeing ABT's second company. Water plants, sew the button back on the pants finally, read Dennis's Times from last night, get a call from Bruce who wants to go out to lunch about 4 pm today, and find the company is sold out, so I'll go early and put name on a waiting list about 7:30, all while catching up on these eight pages of the diary (and Actualism page) by 1:20 pm! Type the current DO LIST (see DIARY 91104) just to get that off my mind, and do a few other things, probably doing the dishes, and then settle down to do Level 1 of the LB+ series, marking the 128 pages from 2-3, typing the 138 cards from 3-3:30, talking to Azak for 10 minutes in the middle of that, and then sort all the way through from 3:30-4, at which time Bruce arrives and says that I look great and acts disappointed when I'm not in the energy of the day, and we talk about the trip, some of my run-ins with Azak, and plans for further trips. He talks of great doings on the Astral Plane, where he'd been almost constantly after about 3 surgeries in as many weeks, and he's almost through First Advanced, as the leading group is almost through Second Advanced, and we talk about the complementary feelings of worthlessness and idealization. Then we're out about 5, meeting Pope just after we'd talked about him and I say "You have to meet him sometime," and Bruce says he's a powerful person, and we get to Szechwan Empress on Court almost to Atlantic, and my beef, chicken, shrimp and fish (scallops) meat with hot sauce is GREAT for $5.50, and his preserved bean curd is good with pork, too, as was our ham and winter melon soup. Out about 6:10 to get back home and collect stuff for the Ballet Repertory Company, leaving about 6:30, getting there about 7:15, and waiting on a divaned line next to a BEAUTY who seems to be wearing makeup, reading, and lots of people pass and finally I ask Marcia Siegel if she has an extra seat, and she does (even though they don't have her reservation, but the girls says MARCIA Siegel? and lets us in, so it's FREE), and the company is pretty good (see DIARY 12810). Out about 10, to Dennis's at 10:30, he hadn't gone out, and we eat, I read part of the Times, he smokes, we have great sex, and sleep about 2 am, usual.
DIARY 12811
SUNDAY, MARCH 12. Up at 10 for rather rushed sex, but finished by 10:30, and his folks don't call until 10:55, when he's had his coffee and I'm ready to watch Ram Thai, with more on the choreographers than on the dancing, and it's not interesting without color. Then finish the Times and decide that I WON'T go home today, so work the puzzle, too, and we have breakfast and I read until we leave for "The Italian Straw Hat" at 1:45, getting to a long line at 2:15, not seeing Bob Driska in the audience, but there are LOTS of sexy guys, and the opera is very charming (see DIARY 12812). Out at 5 and take a bus downtown for him to shop for more peas, which I shell while watching "The Sands of the Namib," a fascinating study of sexy beetles and the quick rains and dunes that I MAY have seen before, and Arnold arrives early at 5:55 and talks to Dennis as he finishes cooking the rabbit, and Theo Tarter comes at 6:05, and when my program finishes at 6:15 I enter the kitchen to kiss them BOTH solidly, and Theo IS sexy. We're having the white wine to start with, while the rabbit's cooking, and then the few peas with the RED wine, and I'm feeling quite good, kissing Theo and getting the stirs of an erection very quickly, and neither of them likes Dennis's yogurt and strawberry dessert, so I finish mine and then go into the living room to lie on the bed, and Theo plays with my legs, Arnie lays on the floor, and Dennis sits on the floor and tries to keep the conversation going. We all wish Arnold would leave, but he doesn't, necking with Theo on the floor for a LONG time while Dennis and I neck on the bed, and finally he leaves about 12:30, but WITH Theo, and Dennis almost had to chase them out by saying he had to work the next day. At first he didn't want to smoke, but I suggested he might want to get into his cock, and he finally does, getting the popper, and we get into a GREAT session with both cocks VERY hard and throbbing and dripping, and it more than makes up for the frustration of the evening, and we get to bed in the overheated room with come drying on ourselves, and I've again pulled out the bed from the wall so that my shoulders will rest against the warm cork rather than against the cold cement of the outside brick wall.
DIARY 12813
MONDAY, MARCH 13. Alarm goes at 7 and we have sex AGAIN, and I'm getting rather tired of it, but Dennis just smiles and continues. Breakfast and more reading, and he goes off to work and I get into old New Yorkers and leave at 11:40 so I take a subway down for my hand session with Rebekah, which goes from 11-1 (see DIARY 12814), and pick up the Bermuda stuff from Winston and manage to lose it somewhere along the way. Had called Joan Ann from Dennis's and got down to see her about 1:40, having had a slice of pizza first, maybe leaving the folders there, and looking at the schedule of "Sebastiane," seeing as how I was in the neighborhood, and then she's not at ALL far along and I get VERY depressed looking at her idiosyncratic letters and spellings and capitalizations, but then the assistant comes in and I guess she'll be DONE, anyway, though I have to phone Nora again and postpone the date. Out about 2:45 and get into the last half-hour of "Sebastiane" anyway, not very crowded, and the movie's sexy but not very good (see DIARY 12815). Leave about 4:30 and get back to put things away and decide I'm horny enough to jerk off with the slides, but they don't really turn me on so I go to the porno and finally shoot with about three rubber bands around my cock. Finish typing and proofing the level 1 index from 7:15-8, taking 2.75 hours for a $128 job, or $46.55/hour, which HAS to be the best yet! Then watch "The Prisoner" from 8-9, though it's getting rather predictable, then watch John Cleese's "Fall of Civilization (as we know it)," which seems to be a takeoff on "Murder by Death" with the multiple unmaskings at the end with Cleese as Sherlock Holmes and some woman as Moriarty's niece. That goes to 10, and I'm debating going to sleep, but get into "Something Happened" out of perversity and then decide I have to finish the last 40 pages of "Catch-22," which I do by about midnight, and then get into bed, conscious that I haven 't done anything about light-work yet today, but I've drunk so much wine with the pork and so many types of cordials while watching TV and reading that I feel quite plotzed, so that even though I try starting a session in bed, I fall asleep before it's really gotten started, hoping it's OK.
DIARY 12816
TUESDAY, MARCH 14. Wake about 8, do light-work until 9, try calling Nick but he's not in yet, read some more of "Something Happened" until I feel forced into work, so I get to Level 4 index from 10:35-11:35 to mark not very much of it, setting up the card table to handle the following pages more effectively than in level 3, and then get out to the B&H dairy by 12:40 to have some mushroom barley soup with challah and rice pudding for $2.33, then in for "Equus" from 1-3:25, strikingly expanded from the stage with a truly temple-like stable, a nice-cocked, AGAIN small-boy Peter Firth, and a nice Joan Plowright to counter the excelling psychiatrist of Richard Burton, but I think the play's been worked around to permit him to talk to the audience and make things even more clear. The horse-blinding was too graphic, the man on the horse was striking, and even the St. Mark's audience behaved, thanks to a conscientious usher who raised the sound when I requested it and forbade anyone from smoking. "Short Eyes" was surprisingly UNgraphic, except for the mental attitudes of these people, criminals, for a child rapist, and the final twist that he was "adjudged" innocent (though he CONFESSED that he'd done it with DOZENS of little girls, of whom PRs and blacks were the easiest) after he was killed by the macho white is a bit much. Less effect with the throat-slitting then with the horse's eyes in "Equus." Crowd began to get noisy at 5:10, when I phoned Dennis, who said he'd phone me later, and I get home and start washing the dishes when he calls at 7 to say he has TKTS tickets to "The Play's the Thing," so I finish dishes and get out at 7:30 to beat him to BAM at 7:50 for a very competent production of a LAVISHLY set play (see DIARY 12817). Out at 10:10 and back to my place where I INSIST that the pork goes into the oven while I take a shower, and he has some wine and drinks, and I get out to find him watching Cavett with Celeste Holm, and then we eat until 12:30, when he wants to watch "The Night Walker," and then HE poops out and I have to sit through to 2 to find that Robert Taylor had killed "the Dream's" sweetheart, then the dream, so was the villain who was haunting Barbara Stanwyck with the burned face of her already-blind husband, and it was a VERY cheap film and she screamed a whole lot during it. Phoned Art Ostrin at last yesterday and today, too, and arranged to see his play sometime.
DIARY 12818
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15. Dennis wakes at 7 and we have sex before he gets into the shower, protesting he doesn't have much time, and I've shopped for bread for french toast, which is good with peas for a change, and he leaves at 9:20 and I get right down to the index from 9:20-11:20, when Eddie calls and has quit his job and needs money, and I phone Joan Ann to find she won't be finished before MONDAY for sure, so I phone Nora Gomes-Comerer and she accepts it surprisingly calmly, which I hope means I might be getting it next year, too. Then continue from 11:50-1, when Eddie rings and comes up to make himself lunch of hamburger and the rest of the peas, and washes all the dishes into the bargain while I'm typing the cards, and then whiz through the sorting and some of the typing from 1:15-4:30, when Nick calls and makes a lot of changes in the index that's thankfully within the space limitations, but he says that I now have to ADD lots of lines since the character count has been increased by 5, but he says that my ms should be OK with editing. Mrs. Johnson rings, then , too, and I go down to pick up the mail, sign the new lease with a $5.75 increase for the windows, hear she's thinking about the place going co-op, and have her look at the tub, which she says she'll get fixed when she's back from baby-sitting in a week. Then eat my hamburger which is overdone when I forget about it, reading the mail and get back to proofread and re-sort and type in about 50 more lines from 5:20 to 7:20, very pleased that everything's working out VERY well, and then wash my face and leave for Actualism at 7:30, getting there with two checks for the last two appointments, and Barbara Lea DOES own up to being in New Yorker, and Winston comments about the huge class (14 in the class) before starting a rather effect-less session (see DIARY 12819). Out at 10:30 and buy two more bottles of wine and get to Dennis's where he's re-warmed the rabbit, which we have with orange juice-cut Sangre de Toros wine, and we get into cock and I'm so hard I listen to his urgings to come on him, so I stand over him and play and play with a hard cock, knowing it'll work, until I shoot in five different directions and collapse in an aching heap on the bed, both VERY content, at about 1 am, then fall asleep instantly, and I'm lugging around two indexes to return.
DIARY 12820
THURSDAY, MARCH 16. Wake at 7 and have sex until 7:30, both coming again, and I lay and do light-work from 7:50 to 8:35, when he's almost ready for breakfast, and I've gone through the emotional lifebelt and it felt good. Up for scrambled eggs and more of his whole wheat toast, which we also had last night when the rabbit ran out rather prematurely, only 7 meals out of a $14 rabbit, and then he leaves at 9 and I read about Johnny Carson in the New Yorker until 10:15, when I leave for Harper and get there at 10:45 to find Nick on the phone, but get in at 11 and go through and find MORE mistakes in 3 and 4, then to Susan's office from 11:30 to 12:30 to put things in order, and the BEAUTIFUL blond Don Richardson comes in to proofread for Susan, and we chat about his choir singing in St. Thomas, his summers at "the Island" for which he needs a haircut soon, and his willingness to give my name as an indexer and my willingness to do ANYTHING for him. Out to Reidy's for lunch from 1-2:30, good for a reasonable price, including a bloody mary, which I pay for since I feel so good about not getting another index and for finishing 3 of the 6 already, and home to pick up 14 more letters from the box, three RESPONSES with $6 for more ALREADY, and buy groceries for Edward Moulton-Barrett, who called on Tuesday and will call between 4:30 and 5 today. Home at 3:30 to scrub the toilet, sink and tub after reading the mail until 4, then scrub the kitchen floor, Dennis calling at 5:30 to say he has to leave since it's snowing, and he agrees to come over, and then Edward calls at 6:30, after I've dusted and gotten ready to sweep, so I sweep, wash, and dress just before he comes in, having time to even do a diary page, and we chat about his project for the Barrett-Browning apartment in Florence (see DIARY 12821), and Dennis enters about 10 minutes later, at 7:30. He's drinking whiskey that Bill thankfully left, we're drinking white wine, and Dennis is hungry enough to get us out to the Mexican place at 9, which is suspiciously empty, but Edward has VERY spicy chicken mole poblano and we have the fiesta assortment for $5.50, and I pay the bill of $23.25+$3.50 tip for $26.75, with the $16.75 lunch, I spent $43.50 in FOOD today! Home at 11 to give them questionnaires, which Edward fills out, and I shower and make his bed, and Dennis is playing because questionnaire turned him on to smoke, so I say goodnight to Edward who's disappointed, and Dennis comes with GREAT feeling on my chest, and lights go off about 12:30, sorry I missed "Don Giovanni," but just ONLY.
DIARY 12824
FRIDAY, MARCH 17. Alarm goes at 7 and we cuddle and Dennis is QUICKLY up, again protesting that he has to get to work, but I jerk off with my legs dangling off the side of the bed, him standing over me, and then he comes to straddle me and jerks off on me JUST by 8, when Edward says he wakes up, to hear the orgasmic sounds of the coffee that Dennis puts on. He showers and cleans out the tub, which Edward doesn't use, and I make bacon and scrambled eggs for us all, and we eat and Dennis goes off to work at 9 and Edward starts packing while I start typing diary pages. Edward's off about 9:45 and I continue typing, putting dishes away, catching up on all the activities of the past week, and Edward returns at 12, and who calls at 12:05 but Don Richardson (see DIARY 12822)! Tell him I'll call him back and carry Edward's heavy suitcase to the BMT by 12:30, after he called the Lotos Club to say he'd be late, and back to phone Don and get built up a great feeling of ANTICIPATION for him Monday (see DIARY 12823). Finish 14 pages at 2:25! Dennis had called already and we're seeing the Olympia double at 7 pm tonight! Get to the Cyclic Nucleotides index from 2:45-3:35, finding it dreadfully boring, and then exercise, have lunch, talk to Joan Ann and Azak, then shower and get back to finish marking 100 pages from 5:25-6:15, hoping I have enough cards for the limited-scope index. Leave and make good time and get to the Olympia at 6:55, reading my book, and Dennis arrives and we see "Semi-Tough," which is notable mainly for Burt Reynolds' comic performance, not so much for the EXACT depiction, rather than spoofing, of BEAT and Fredrich Bismark and Pelfing and Pyramid Power and Creeping and crawling, but it was sort of a screwball comedy, particularly when the Slavic goal-kicker ripped down the dress at the climax and fondled the boobs to the audience's delight. "Demon Seed" was even better, with Julie Christie completely convincing as the "wife" of Proteus, but the AUDIENCE WAS A ZOO (see DIARY 12825)! Out at 10:55, walk home, where he makes spaghetti while I read New Yorker, and we eat until 12:30, then he smokes, we play in bed, but I'm VERY tired so he just gets into his cock and plays and I talk and talk and he poppers and comes, and we're to sleep about 1:30, me not even staying awake enough to do light-work, so none today.
DIARY 12826
SATURDAY, MARCH 18. Wake about 8:30 and can't get into Actualism, then have an erection that won't go away, and play and play with it until Dennis wakes about 9:30, and he watches and gets into himself until I bring myself off without the brink-pausing that I'd wanted, and he smiles and grabs my cock, but he goes down quickly and takes the popper from me and goes out of bed to urinate, saying that it's 10 am already. I get up after trying light-work unsuccessfully again, and leave at 10:30 when I have to admit I'm not very hungry for breakfast. Home at 11 to pick up the mail, reading Soho while shitting and changing clothes, and then phone Rolf to talk about movies and Don Maloof to talk about his getting a summer house in the Hamptons and we getting together sometime, and I finish these two pages by 12:30, ready for index. Mark pages 101-220 and then the appendix pages on the same topics, from 735-753, from 12:30-3:10, and then I stop to eat lunch and talk to Don Richardson, who doesn't want to come over to watch "Count Dracula" at midnight with me because he has to sing early the next morning. Do dishes, I think, too, and then get back to marking pages 221-370 and 754-759, to complete just half the book, from 5-7:30, feeling good about the 5 hours and 10 minutes work I did today. Don't feel like starting typing on Saturday night, so I do other things until 8, when I watch "Mysterious Castles of Clay" about incredible termites, shades of "Hellstrom Chronicle" with fantastic shots of the ENORMOUS queen who's a baby-making machine, magical shots of the newborn "crystal" babies, the battles with the ants that are obviously staged, the startling flight of the nymphs and their sacrifice to the dozens of lizards, dogs, birds, frogs, and other insects that devour them. Then watch a bit of Big Band Bash on 13, then out for the Times, which I read until 12:30, having done the puzzle, too, and then watch all three segments of "Count Dracula" from 12:30 to 3:15, taking the fundraising intermissions to eat some raisins, get the bed ready for my sleep, and finishing other reading. No one's very sexy, the baby-eating sequence isn't THAT bloody, Louis Jourdan is creepy in red eyes and in the gray-skinned menacing shots, but it's hardly a classic and would scarcely bear watching a second time.
DIARY 12827
SUNDAY, MARCH 19. Wake about 10, and Dennis calls to say he's coming over to watch Anna-Teresa Callan on Camera Three in Celebration of the Egg, and he gets here about 10:45 and we watch it and then have breakfast and he answers my questionnaire with 6 closely typed pages while I watch "A Birthday Party for Josef Strauss" while he finished breakfast, ending with the Vienna Ballet doing scenes from Johan Strauss's "Blue Danube." That's till 1, when "Don Giovanni" comes on, and it's a super production (see DIARY 12828). Arnold had phoned about the skating program, so I watched the end of that from 4:30 to 5, and then read Dennis's report and cleaned the place up a bit and talked on the phone and then watched "Great American Dream Machine Revisited," which is somewhat a bore with VERY old clips of Mr. Rogers and early puppets and other technically obsolescent programs, and then the range of Sesame Street and Zoom and Masterpiece Theater and Dance and Opera and Ballet, but so much interspersed with commercials for money that it seems more tedious than entertaining. After a bit, it seems that Channel 13 is nothing but one long commercial. That's on from 8-10, and I'm still skimming through the Times, and then from 10:40-11:10 is Jim May as some Jewish king reacting to Queen Esther, choreographed by Anna Sokolow with her usual angst, and whenever anyone's happy the only thing they can do is raise their heads and jump around and fling their arms in the air. How awful, and Arnie called again during this for some reason, because neither he nor I REALLY wanted to go to the Mineshaft, as we thought we might, but I was just too inert to do so. Then "Jesus Christ Superstar" seems better than the fragment I watched before, Ted Neely looking good but with a surprising whine and reedy voice as Christ, Carl Anderson as a strikingly active black Judas, Bob Bingham as a chesty and sexy Caiaphus, and Bill Toubus as a tall blond non-acting Peter. "I Don't Know How to Love Him," is a rather fetching song, repeated by practically everybody, "Hosanna, Hey-sanna, Sonna, Sonna-Ho" is rousing but they don't play it enough, and the title song is rather overlooked and underdone, too. The butch guards were nice, whether Roman or Jewish, but it just didn't come alive---maybe we all know the plot too well. VERY tired at the end and draggle off to bed at 1:45. Maybe even come after that.
DIARY 12829
MONDAY, MARCH 20. Up about 9 and talk to Joan to find that she's not going to be done very soon, so I phone Nora and find that she's working until 4:30 today and starts at 8:30 tomorrow morning, so I say it'll be there when it can. I shower and fuss about the apartment, doing nothing that I remember, having something to eat, talking to lots of people on the phone, and get out about 12:15 to get to Star Center for my Splenic Surgery (see DIARY 12830-12831), which is over about 2:45, and I decide to pick up half that she's done, so I subway down to 6th and 14th and get to her place and pick up half the stuff, and now she's saying she'll be through some time this evening, but it'll depend if someone comes in to clear her apartment for her. I walk up past sexy people and get to Don Richardson's about 3:40, and I praise his apartment, talk to him about doing the letters if I get them back next year, chat about his jobs and work habits, look through some of his books on men, praise his aunt's knitwear, and go into the bedroom, fortified with glasses of white wine, to look at photographs, and I want to get into SOMETHING, so I apologize for my awkwardness, saying I feel that way when I'm very much attracted to someone, and he says "What do you want me to do?" after apologizing for making me uncomfortable, and I say "I'd like to hold you," and we start hugging, but then he leads easily into being kissed, and then we're moving back and forth and he's hard, so we get into sex easily (see DIARY 12832), but I can't come, so I blame it on Dennis, and then we're out naked to talk for a bit, and I phone Joan Ann at 6 to find that she's not going to be done before midnight, so I leave, phoning Dennis, and then just subway up to his place, getting in about 7, start checking her work, and he's in about 7:30, surprised to find me there, and he makes dinner while I check the rest of the papers, we eat his dinner, and then it seems that we're talking so much about it, and I feel so out of it, and I've told him about Don Richardson and my not coming, that he smokes and gets into his cock and I may not come at all, since it seems I feel very horny the next night, but we get to bed at his place eventually.
DIARY 12833
TUESDAY, MARCH 21. Alarm goes at 7 and I phone Joan Ann, who's not finished yet, saying she'll leave it with the doorman (no, I called last night at 1 am and settled this) at 7:30, so I leave about 7:45, having no breakfast, and get to Joan's about 8:15, relieved to find it there, but later find that she took it downstairs ABOUT 8:10! Up to McGraw-Hill about 8:35 and tell Nora, who seems nice, that I'll need a couple of hours to check it, so I go through everything and re-click things and change words and xerox a copy for myself, and finish about 11:30, leaving it off with relief, and then get home to have lunch and read the mail, then get to the index for VERY slow typing from 1:25-2:15, then talks to Joan Ann, who says it wasn't a bargain for her, but then it wasn't a bargain for ME, either! Continue typing from 2:30-4:20, then talk to Dennis who wants to come over this evening, and I'm glad I have the pork shoulder ready for us. Then back at 4:40 to talk to Joan Sumner and make reservations for her play on Thursday, and stop at 5:15 to talk to Arnold for 45 minutes, and then continue typing from 6 to 7:20, when I put dinner on, and then from 7:25 to 8:20, when Dennis comes in and makes another of his crème de menthe coolers because I want to get rid of the old club soda. I drink lots of wine and we both get nicely hot, but then when I get out of the shower, having shaved, he's in the bed asleep, so there's nothing for me to do but continue drinking and go out into the living room to jerk off, taking the poppers and porno as quietly as I can, and get everything away and STILL don't feel like going to sleep (the jerk-off was quite unsatisfying: just COULDN'T get it to sustain an edge, so just came quite soft, just to GET off), so watched the greater part of "Nosferatu," which DOES stand up well, until 12:15, when I get hooked into watching "Crime in the Streets" with a 27-year-old John Cassavetes who understandably makes a sexy 18-year-old, and a 20-year-old Sal Mineo who looks about 13. But it's quite gratuitously ugly when Cassavetes wants to kill someone and threatening his little brother, who tearfully says "I LOVE you," and reduces everyone to repentance, and then ends up being lead out to talk to the cop who's being accosted by Cassavetes' victim. Bed feeling momentarily displeased with myself at 2:15, but the feeling passes very quickly.
DIARY 12834
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22. Alarm goes at 7 and he sleeps till 7:45, then I'm up to make us breakfast, finishing the bacon, as I remember, and he's off to work about 9 and I'm back to mark the rest from 9:05-2:55, taking out 50 minutes that I talked on the phone to various people, probably Bruce, Arnie, 10:50-55, and Rolf 1:15-2, about stock and my bringing porno, and Joan about the play, and immediately AFTER Dennis calls to say that he wants to hear a jazz performer on Thursday, so he'll be seeing Joan's play tonight, so I call Theo and he'll go with me tomorrow. Have lunch and read the mail and maybe even run a few errands, and then type the rest of the cards between 4:15 and 6:15. Then shower and wash my hair and get out to Actualism just on the dot of 8:15, but I'm not the last one, and I have to turn in two checks since I'd forgotten to bring along a check on Monday for my $25 surgery. The session is quite a blank one (see DIARY 12835-12836), but I insist it's not bad to Winston. Get up to the Promenade at 10:45 to find Dennis not there, and I'm debating whether he may have hated it and gone home, but just going to the elevator to see if he's still upstairs talking to Joan and he's coming out of it, and we decide to find a place to eat in the neighborhood, and go around the corner on 75th to find Rancho Allegre with a pleasant-looking menu, and they say they're still open, and we get in to order a carafe of wine that makes the evening pleasant, Dennis liked the plays, I'm talking about the session, but my teeth have been so bad recently that I used the waterpik for the first time in ages, and it seems to have scoured off some of my gum skin, because the acid in the delicious ham-and-artichoke-heart salad is very hurtful to my gums, and then I can't chew hard food on the left because the lower molars seem to be very pressure-sensitive, but the barbecued beef is very tasty, sadly I talked Dennis out of his hamburger and peaches to get a salad and plantain, and he brings me a huge bowl of rice to go with my salad, and doesn't charge me extra for it, and is pleased that I went to see Tres Oyos in Santo Domingo, which is where everyone is from. Delightful place for about $10, and we're out to walk up to his place and he smokes and we get into sex with, I think, results.
DIARY 12837
THURSDAY, MARCH 23. Through Dennis's usual morning ritual and home to buy wine and meat again to find that I have lots of it at home already. Maybe also check the post office, possibly buy stamps, and home to finish reading "Sorrows of Priapus" which I'd almost finished last night before going late to class. Also take a FULL hour for the light-work practice, coming up with lots of questions. Work from 12:55 to 2:20 typing the cards from the rest of the appendix abstracts, interrupted by Bob Rosinek and Theo at 1:20-1:30, and then sort the As and Bs from 2:20 to 5, taking out ten minutes to talk to Dennis. Then shower and leave to meet Theo at 6:25 and wander the streets looking for someplace to eat, and he highly recommends the Cherry Restaurant, but the waitress is gruff, and the food is good but not outstanding, his veal marsala almost tasteless, my chicken cutlet with Kushikatsu sauce good, and the bean and salad salads tasty. Next door to INCREDIBLE chocolate brownies with almost TOO-sweet icing for dessert, walking the street, and around the corner to the Priory and upstairs at 7:45 to hear Joan arguing with someone backstage (she later said the robber was too rough on her and her "husband") and then her three one-acts "Putting Them to Pasture" starts about 8:10, and the first is awful but the next two aren't bad, both from the writing and the acting points of view (see DIARY 12838). It's over at 10:45 and we wait around to talk to the author, who's sort of humpy, and talk to Joan for a few minutes, but she's very scattered. It's starting to rain, so we take a bus to his place, he makes me a screwdriver and we talk until midnight, me fascinated with the fact that HE'S kept a diary for 15 years, and he's more socially-oriented than Dennis would have given me the impression. Then we get into bed, and it's quite a fabulous evening of sex (see DIARY 12839). To bed about 3 am, thankfully over the beginnings of an allergy I had for his cat, undisturbed by the half-light from the bamboo-blinded window, pleased that tomorrow's Good Friday and he doesn't have to work, and nonplussed by the idea that he preferred to have two or three fingers jammed up his ass before he wanted to shoot---and that he didn't seem interested in my orgasm, but then I might not have been ready, anyway.
DIARY 12840
FRIDAY, MARCH 24. Wake about 9, and he's up rather quickly to put on some clothes, feed the cat, and make tea for me and coffee for him, and then he whips the batter for the waffles and they come out QUITE light but also quite moistureless. Like, as he says, pieces of Styrofoam, and the syrup hardly makes them any more moist. Look through his Viva and Playboy as he putters around getting ready, but there's nothing to turn me on again. We're both out about 12, ready for the day, and I subway home and read the mail and get back to continue with the editing, enormous quantities of AMP, cyclic; GMP, cyclic; Nucleotides, cyclic; and Adenylate and Guanylate cyclase, and work from 12:55 to 6:40, interrupted only by a call from Bruce from 1:15 to 2, where we talk about going to the full-moon meditation tonight, and I just say YES, since it's something that I wanted to do, and this is a special celebration for Easter. Leave at 7 and shuttle across and walk the rest of the way to UN Plaza and in at 7:50 to see Bruce and listen to the tacky sermonette (see DIARY 12841), and it's over at 9, which isn't bad, and then Bruce talks to people he knows and I avoid Marilyn and Faye and Sylvan, and his friend's rather humpy friend is saying how many energies he's felt today, but he has to get to bed early. We're out, still chattering away, and I feel very disaffected by the whole thing, and we get a cab, to which I contribute $1, to the Penn Center to get his car, and then we drive to my place, finding an illegal parking place on Willow, and they come up here to sit at my telephone and listen to the Intro tape, but Bruce doesn't even charge him $1. I'm fairly bored with it, feeling vaguely guilty because I haven't been doing light-work at ALL regularly, and the friend says he felt some things, and they pack up and leave at 11, and I hope I haven't been TOO negative. Finish reading "Strange Life of Ivan Osokin" sometime during the day, and I don't remember what I did with the rest of the evening: I didn't watch TV, I didn't work, so I probably got out the porno and came with it, probably not very effectively, and tried and failed to get to bed early because I want to get up early for Philadelphia tomorrow. Tried phoning Bernie Mazie but getting no answer, phoned for travel information.
DIARY 12842
SATURDAY, MARCH 25. Wake at 7:15, before the alarm set for 7:30, and get up and have breakfast (another batch of 2 eggs to match the batch I got up and ate last night because I was so hungry I couldn't sleep) and put things together (forgetting the page from the Museum album that I looked through last night when I was gathering maps and guides for Philadelphia), and get out at 8:30, still too late, and stand in line at LIRR until 8:55 and still buy a ticket for $18.50 and have time to get on the train, reading the boring "The Fourth Way." Boring ride through back yards, looking like it's about to rain, and phone Dennis from 30th Street station to find he'll be tied up at least until 3, so I walk over to the University Museum and go through all the galleries until I'm quite tired by 3:10, and phone and find that he'll be having dinner there, do I want to come out? No, so I sit and read some of the booklet I bought, feeling sorry for myself, and then return to the African and Oceanic sections, nice stuff from Benin, and back to the top rotunda for the magnificent objects from ancient China, staring at the crystal hall, marveling at the size and fatness of the Buddhist murals, looking at the camels and horses and lohans and Buddhas in various woods, metals, bronzes, stones, and paints. Then the place closes at 5 and I phone Art to find his friends are in, walk down to slip a note in Bernie Mazie's mailbox, find that Michael Ralph's new number is unlisted, and walk down to 15th and Walnut looking, possibly, for a movie, and then decide among The Embassy French, The Penthouse View, and Bookbinder's Fish on 15th, and the crowd's interesting to watch, the waitress is fun, the carafe of wine is inhibition-removing, and for $15 it's a great meal, even the scallops delicious, like pieces of brain, the crab cake chitinous, the shrimp huge and singular, the scrod tasty, the salad good, the french fries fat, and I'm too full for dessert at all. Out "to the clothespin [huge sculpture]" and down to bum change from a stranger because the ticket office has none, and ride quickly out on the subway-elevated to the crowd going toward Styx, getting a cab to "Places Please" at 7:15, read for a bit, and get into the balcony at 8 for a revue of the technical crew, Dennis comes up, "Irma la Douce" is mixed (see DIARY 12843), and we're out at 10:45 to drive down to Big Magda's, or something, where they eat and I have beer and a half-piece of cheesecake for dessert, and they drive us back to the Holiday Inn where we have very nice sex in double bed. Sleep at 2:30.