1979 2 of 5
SUNDAY, 4/29/79: Wake about 10 and doze until 10:45, when Dennis goes downstairs to get the call from his folks and I go out for the Times and go down to his place to read part of it, then work on his index from 12:15-1:10, and up to shower and peek at the Times, having taken notes about the computer application for about half an hour while he talked with his folks and we had some toast, then Amy comes over at 2 and picks up Huntington's Disease and leaves, then someone's on the phone and I hear Dana and Jody and Doris enter downstairs about 2:45, and it's funny I had to take the closet apart for Amy's cards JUST as Dennis wanted to borrow a folding chair, ALSO behind everything in the closet. Down and Doris sits in the chair and holds forth, I come upstairs to get the New York which had Dana's friend's apartment in it to show Doris, and she has some Tchilichew drawings to sell, which interests me first for John Connolly and Andre, and then for ME, and Dennis's leek and tomato soup is fabulous, but his lemon chicken is rather dry, though tasty, and the salad is good and the bread is good, as are the cut fruit in rosewater --- how imaginative!! Dinner is served late at 4, and then I have to leave at 5:45 and they drive me up because SHE wants to be home at 7 to watch "When the Ship Comes In" on TV, last episode tonight, and I get to the meeting in fine time (see ACTUALISM 8) and ask my questions and have a butter pecan ice cream cone with Pat and Bruce, then walk up to Jo's at 8:35 and we chat for a bit before Dennis arrives, and he gets VERY snippy about HIS not checking her index because I'M supposed to check it, but he does, finding lots of things, and I find lots more things, and it's really a LOT all marked up, but at midnight Richard's wanting to put money into the computer project and Jo's about falling asleep and Dennis is crabby but it's FINISHED and not THAT bad, and I'm willing for her to have another. We subway home reading our own stuff and he asks me down for soup, so even though we're both tired I go down and he heats the soup and it's maybe THEN that I start making notes, and the soup's good, with wine and chicken, and we're to bed.
MONDAY, 4/30/79: Up logily at 7:30, he's got breakfast on by 8:30, and I take more notes, have his fried eggs and toast, then get upstairs to work straight through typing lots of sheets for the computer specs until 2:40, by which time I'm hungry again but have to leave for Allegra's, getting there ABOUT 3:15, Stephanie's asleep with the TV on and the typewriter going while Allegra slowly types the bill for $295 for 25 hours work without the proofreading that she says would take 2-3 hours, so it's not over $10/hour, and less than my $340 subject index. Out about 3:45 and it's perfect weather outside: cool and breezy and reasonably dry, and I pass a french bakery on 21st and Broadway and up to Springer to find Linda, give her the two, then xerox the 18 sheets that I'd done for the specifications, doing 5 of the pages 6 more times for supplements to the indexing-writeup book, and Linda LEAVES at 4 each day. Wave at Jenet, down to get the OK from Jeff Robbins that Jo's index is all marked up, wave at Angie, and get out at 4:45 feeling GREAT, having another index from Linda for Dennis, having passed Gaby in the hall and said she'd love the bill's smallness. Home about 5:30 after eating with my coupon in Burger King, two mini-whoppers good with a milk shake and not much meat, read the mail, decide to finish the puzzles in the Times, which takes a lot of looking in encyclopedias and dictionaries and at maps and quotations, but I finally finish both, then read the paper thoroughly, interrupted by Dennis coming up to get some second-sheets for the index that he's typing, and reading everything takes me right up to 10 pm when I watch "Charles I" on "Royal Heritage," which again makes me wish I knew a bit more about British history, but the paintings were grand that he'd collected of Rubens and Van Dyck and Rembrandt, and have popcorn during it, and then read more articles in the Times from 11-11:30, at which time I watch the Nova about the Sonoran Desert, not really terribly interesting, but then I get out the porno and jerk off nicely, excited by it and by the rubber band and the popper, and STILL don't feel tired, so I read a bit more of "Public Burning" until I finally feel my eyes closing about 1:30, and drop off.
TUESDAY, 5/1/79: Arnie wakes me by ringing at 9:35 and telling about his plans for the day and for going to Kings Theater on Saturday, asking if Dennis wants to go with him and the guy he met at the Mineshaft who invited him to lunch at the Yale Club recently, and he hangs up at 10:10, at which time a guy from Equifax Services calls for the auto insurance and I say Art's my neighbor and then quickly call Art, who says he'd called him YESTERDAY and he said I got to work very early and got home late. So I hope it worked out, though Art said this was the first time anyone checked on it since his sister and lots of others had their business with that box. Art's going on a 12-week tour this summer and I suddenly fantasize using his house while he's away, now that I have a car, since he's willing to go up ANY day I'd feel free. Phone Lauren to check on tomorrow, leave word with Andre again and John Casarino to phone me, Barbara calls saying all's well and she might not be in class tomorrow, Sherryl calls and asks some questions, I call Dennis and say I've checked the index-marking with Jeff and it's OK, call Larry to get index switched to me when Andre calls from Staten Island (collect, since he didn't have 30) and says he's busy but might want it anyway, and then Doris calls and says her Tchilichew drawings are $200, $400, $500, $700, $1200, and $1700, and I called Sotheby-Park Bernet via Andre's suggestion and find that a 1939 10x8 pen Ondine went for $600, while a 19 x 13 "Tete Spiral" in crayon went for $2000, so Andre was right when he said it depended on SIZE! Say that Dennis and I will come up to take a look at them sometime. Work from 11-2:15 on the computer specs, adding a page and putting things in order, then have lunch while reading the mail and finishing the April Omni, then work on computer specs from 2:55-4:30, putting files in order, then work on the indexing book from 4:30-7, then water plants and start on these pages, deciding to call Mom to sing "Happy birthday" to her and tell her that she might think about investing $10,000 in the computer program (and I should tell her it's half the size now?), and Madge called and said I needed a writeup, and I said that's EXACTLY what I just did, so I'll take her a copy tomorrow at 2:30, and she said Werner believes in the Delaware incorporation without a lawyer for $100. LOTS of things going on!! I water the plants for the first time since Saturday, time moving FAST, and then get a call from Rolf that the car's in the LOT, and finish this at 8:55, time for TV! "Stay Hungry" is rather silly: Jeff Bridges has to buy a muscle builder's property to complete a package for some shyster investors, he gets involved with woman there, and Arnie Schwarzenegger befriends him and he never takes off his clothes until the final judging, which is never DECIDED since someone runs off with the money and everyone chases after him in Birmingham in posing briefs. Some dynamite bodies, but Dennis annoys me when he comes in late from class, saying he'd be here at 10 and he's here at 10:30, and I'm finishing up boiling the corn and frying the steak and then give it over to HIM, and he mopes and eats in the kitchen as I gobble it down before the muscle-filled climax that might be cut, and we drink more and have sex and get to bed, him seeming to not bear me a grudge for harping at him for the movie.
WEDNESDAY, 5/2/79: Make breakfast, maybe the scrambled eggs with bologna, but he's going on a trip to Kutztown today and doesn't leave until 10, which is ironic since today I wanted to be OUT at 9:30, so I have to phone Marty and Anthony from breakfast table at 10 to say I'll be late, and get to Dubner past surly security guards who insist on passes for EVERYONE, and I hope to NEVER enter the MONY building again. Anthony takes me into Mr. Dubner's office, which is a mistake because he keeps getting phone calls, telling old jokes, and laughing about business and expenses and how the building heats up in the PM because the windows face west, and I scatter sheets before Anthony and he doesn't seem interested and they're mainly interesting in selling me a hardware system for $19,000 or thereabouts, so I cross THEM off my list and phone Marty at 12, who tells me that I'll have to pick up bagels since he has to wait for the phone man, so I walk up Broadway in the bright sunlight and get a cream cheese for him and an egg salad on pumpernickel for me and to his place at 12:30, when he tells me about his financial problems, his starting in a consulting position with Gert von Gonthard on October 1, how he'll bill me $20/hour for programming, which is less than Dubner's quote of $250-$450/day for programming, but I'm sorry it's so HIGH. He says he'll look over the writeup and I say I'll be in town tomorrow and come back then to talk with him, since it's getting late. It's getting near 2, so I grab a cab and feel very expansive riding crosstown to Madge's office, and get up to her floor to walk through the maze and she says Werner knows all about incorporating, that the specifications look very complete, that she's glad I'm doing something that'll make me lots of money, her parents are very confident of my success, and we chat nicely until 2:15, and then I'm dashing out to Lauren's, getting into the hot conference room about 2:40 and take notes from the author, the Acquiring Editor on my right and the Managing Editor or something like that on her left, and I ask questions and get answers (though mostly I'm told to do what I think best), and then I'm finished about 4:15 and get out feeling relieved that the afternoon went well. On the street I debate returning to Carnegie Hall Cinema where I saw "The Lodger" playing, but then decide to pass the Ziegfeld and think "If 'Hair' goes on at 4:45 (it's 4:37 now) I'll go in, since it should be over about 7, and I'll have time to get up to class." So it starts at 4:40! Dash upstairs and piss and sit JUST as the previews start, and then rather enjoy the movie with NO one around me talking and only people way in the BACK applauding for various credits, lines, and dance numbers. It's not a great movie, but the LSD sequence in the cathedral with the candles, floating priestess, and instantly pregnant wife are VERY evocative, as is the marvelously stoned face of John Savage, and Treat Williams' body is nice when I can watch it, but the SITUATION is rather stupid: him going off to war in SAVAGE'S name and getting buried under his OWN name, the gay guy being the father of the kid and the black being reunited with his wife --- it's all a bit PAT, but the getting there was fun enough, though Treat Williams seemed RATHER childish about some of the situations. Lots of the singing was good, but the dancing was so fragmentary it made Twyla even more Tharpy than before. Out at 6:50 and walk uptown looking for a place to eat, and spot West 103 at 70th, with ribs, and go in for GOOD ones, economizing to leave JUST $12.50 since I forgot to bring a check for this evening's class, and can't have wine ANYWAY. Nice place, she gives me extra orange slices for the spicy ribs, surprisingly meaty, and with the carrots and bread I have enough, then wander radiantly in to class for a REAL bummer (see ACTUALISM 9), lasting longer than it usually does, and at 10:35 I'm in the bottom of the Majestic phoning up to John Casarino, and up to a FABULOUS (though not my style with cavernous beige marble floors and paneled walls and recessed lighting and an elevated carpeted conversation nook, though the glass panes in the kitchen cabinets are nice and the raised bed in the bedroom is stately) apartment to dash into the bedroom to see Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones doing their last pas de deux in ABT's "Sleeping Beauty" live from Lincoln Center that I don't yet know they're re-showing on Sunday. He's elevated but not terribly together, she comes off with some good balances but appears to hate him, so it's not the best performance. Out for a grapefruit and vodka and talk to his balding plumpish friend Tom about paying $48,000 for the place, putting in many ten of thousands more in redecorating, including putting in an enclosure for the fireplace to find that the flues had been removed when the building was built WITHOUT showing that in the master plans, and hassles with the controlled exterior and mirrors on interiors and pipes and too-lowered ceilings. He's been working on it for 3 years now and it's almost finished. Lots of mail, lots of nice feelings, and he gets a note from Paul and he says he'll invite me and Dennis over to meet his French friend sometime during the week of May 14, and I leave about 12, hoping not to have interrupted anything, and probably get home to jerk off in enjoyment of the day's efforts.
THURSDAY, 5/3/79: Sherryl said she wanted to handle cards in the morning, and I phone her at 9:30 discouraged to find her not home, but she calls at 9:45 and says she'll be right over, having taken her cards with her, and I shower and call Arnie and eat breakfast and she's over at 10:40 with rather good cards, and I check through them quickly, leaving at 11:15 to check them on the BMT while she gets off at 8th JUST as I finish them and I continue up to MOMA to JUST meet Arnie in the seat as the lights go off at 12 for a FABULOUS series by the China Institute in America of 13 History of China films using maps, animation, live action, moving artifacts, reduplications, sound effects, tables, and portraits and readings and translations and artists from each dynasty from the prehistoric to the present. Arnie sleeps through much of it, but I think it's totally admirable: if they showed it on TV I'd want to record the whole thing to keep forever. Out at 2:15 and he has to be somewhere, so I stop at August Moon Express on Broadway and 54th for delicious ribs AGAIN, so-so egg drop soup, and sexy people walking past in short sleeves and tight jeans on Broadway. Out and quickly up to Marty's at 3 to find that he's made a perfectly awful suggestion to duplicate the file in some artificial order which would half the storage available, and he thinks it would take between 20-40 hours (that is, between $500-$1000!) to come up with a reasonable estimate and set of specs. I don't like that at all, and figure from then on that I'll have to do the programming! But since I'd need to know the system for MODIFICATIONS in the future and DEBUGGING in the present, that's not all that bad ANYWAY. Then he chats about Jerri being on the wagon but STILL self-destructive, Chris being 9 and terribly intelligent, he comes over every weekend but this one, but I don't take him to task for it, since if he'd STARTED I might have had to PAY him something. He plays me a tape of Don Ermano, or someone from Greece who sings like a male Florence Foster Jenkins while his wife plays with her knuckles, interviewed by Nico Castel as some Hungarian count who has a Vivaldi violin and piano quintet festival in Belize every year, and then we're out for his cigarettes in the rain, chat until 6, and I leave to bump into Regina who loves my beard and says she'd like the cheap hotel's name in Mantua and we're welcome to sleep on her hotel room floor in Venice when she's there in August. Maybe! Since it's raining I go right down to the Japanese Animation program at the Film Forum, reading my book while waiting for 7:15 and opening time, and the Furukawa is stark and silly, the Okamoto is stupid, the Kuri is TERRIBLY misogynist, and the Tanaami are TOTAL nonsequitors, for 14 dreadful films in 79 minutes, one of the worst being the final 19 minutes with puppets by Kawamoto, "Dojoji Temple" about a furious woman, which is what they're ALL about. DREADFUL feeling, and the audience almost booed, too, and lots left. Out at 9 and Dennis is back so I'm down to his place for soup and bread for dinner, and we drink and he smokes and we have sex to his music and go to bed.
FRIDAY, 5/4/79: Since I'd finished all but about the last chapter of "The Public Burning" yesterday I decided to finish it this morning after breakfast, maybe got the box of indexing stuff from Rolf after seeing the lock on the gate and then up to check Sherryl's final typed index, which looks very good, from 11:45-1 pm, and then phone Amy to say I need a body session, and she says I can come over about 3, so I shower and Dorothy phones to say she's overloaded so can she come next week (obviously she called first and THEN I phoned Amy!) to do me, and I realize I have ASI tomorrow, so I phone lots of people and arrange things and go to Amy's at 3, checking over her chapters of "Huntington's Disease" from 3:15-4:15, and then get on her table at 4:30 and she's finished at 5:15 (see ACTUALISM 10), which is just great, and think I'll do a j/0 person tonight, and phone Don Cohen to find that HE works at home on a Hewlett-Packard and he might want to talk computers with me, but 10 pm is too late for him, so I leave work with Mark Barton, who phones at 5:30 and says I can come over, but by then I'm sorry I have to get up at 7 am and can't, and Dennis comes up to get the indexing stuff to look at between 6-7, phone Don to say that his suggestion about Lutece on Wednesday is OK at LAST, and phone Rolf that I might be seeing Steve Solomon's computer on Monday, since he wants to get rid of it quickly and it'll be "under $5500" for the whole thing, which he paints very nicely and I think I might be getting it, since I have $5100 in the bank and will be getting more checks. Dennis is up for Calcified, for which I typed a subject sheet, as I finally water plants for my absence tomorrow. Have something to eat (tuna and noodles somewhere in here) and out to meet Arnie at 7:05 to subway to MOMA while reading my NEW book, "Utilitarianism," first in a long time since I'd started "Public Burning" on 3/30. There in fine time and get his tickets and sit near the front for the special effects films of Linwood Dunn who worked on "Citizen Kane," "Androcles and the Lion," "West Side Story." and others for RKO, but HIS work for "Hawaii" wasn't that hot under the titles, and the lion nipping Androcles was the best of the lot, except for the moving split-screen for Katharine Hepburn and the leopard in "Bringing Up Baby." Out about 11, feeling tired, and home about 1 after eating with Arnie at Rincon Argentina, sadly with slightly underdone sweetbreads and beer, but we chatted and I was exhausted, hoping I would be awake for ASI tomorrow.
SATURDAY, 5/5/79: Alarm goes at 7 and I'm quickly doing lightwork and up at 7:30 to dress and wash face and get to Lexington subway and up to 103rd Street JUST at 8:30, register about 5th of 80 or so, and where I THOUGHT it would be not much, there was a LOT going on (see ESSAYS 8). Found that NO one agreed on styles or rules, lots of people talking computers, and there were even a few sexy people, though I seemed to be the center of attention in my tan slacks that I'd forgotten I owned, with Don's birthday shirt open to my chest, a bit too tight, but Brietenbach, the president outgoing, didn't seem to mind so much, as he kept looking at me. Talked with a librarian about MeSH, which I should have heard about before, Rouslin panics me when he says he's working on an indexing book, Jessica Harris gives me some article about an APL program for indexing, and lunch I chat with Allan Taylor from Engineering Index, and lunch with Jim Anderson and his handsome cohorts is pleasant, though the rare roast beef and cold potatoes are lousy, though the refilled half-and-half is decent enough. Sway through the afternoon talks and at the end Helen Ferguson comes up at 4:30, suggested we ride together, and she says that Dorothy Thomas, one of the judges for the Wilson Indexing Award, says that McGraw-Hill shouldn't use prepositions at ALL!! Get her number, leave Helen at Grand Central, and ride wearily home, MUCH too much stuff in my bag, sweater warm on, and just have time to relax and look at the mail and talk on the phone when I have to leave at 7:15 to get to the Fred Benjamin Dance Company at Brooklyn College, picking up a brownie and a rum-raisin roll for caloric overkill, not selling the ticket because LOTS of yentas are selling spares, and some of the guys are sexy, but the dancing seems to be about the same: "Parallel Lines" has jazzy "War" music and sexy crotches, "Merry Christmas, Anna" has a wicked girl finally attacked by a doll, though there's no dancing or music, just a skit; "Left Over Wine" is jazzy with spectacular lifts and swings, so it's fun. Read, then watch "Crossroads" and "Echoes of an Era," which goes on too long, and get out to subway home and buy a Times and have something to eat, though maybe I take it down to Dennis's, I don't remember, since it's STILL a week back in time.
SUNDAY, 5/6/79: There's so much on my desk from the indexing, the apartment is such a mess, and I want to work on the book but don't know about the computer, and can't seem to make up my mind, so I just sit and read the Times, work all the puzzles, and then don't feel like doing anything after watching "Sleeping Beauty" from 3-5 (told myself I was going to vacuum and dust during the boring parts, but just kept on watching the WHOLE THING, and Bujones wasn't that good a partner, but Gregory was spectacularly balanced during the Rose Adagio, and the interviews by James MacNeil were ingratiatingly stupid, but I just kept on watching, and then wanted to watch "The Flame of New Orleans" which the baseball game delayed until 7:15, and Marlene Dietrich is herself and her wicked cousin, not terribly convincingly, and WHY would she love the frowsy Bruce Cabot, though the bemused look on her face when Laura Hope Crews told her what to do as a wife was funny, and it WAS sort of amusing to see her scooting away from Franklin Pangborn to elope with Cabot. Watched a bit of Rex Humbard, too, then shut him off at 8:15 and started reading Lem's "Chain of Chance" until Dennis comes up at 9:15-10:25 to be checked for his index he'd been doing all day for Calcified Tissue, and then I finish THAT book from 10:25-12:30, having popcorn to eat, and then jerk off nicely with porno and get to bed after reading MORE of Lem, but not finishing "Mortal Engines" but it's nice to INDULGE myself after working hard!!
MONDAY, 5/7/79: Dennis said he'd be up about 8:30, but he got involved in sex withy someone else and didn't finish, so then I worried he'd conflict with Barbara, who was due at 10, phoned at 9:30 and said she'd be over at 10:15, which she was, but he dind't even phone until noon, saying he'd be much later, and Barbara had LOTS of trouble with sub-sub-sub-sub-subs, and I had to move things around and around, and she finally left, exhausting us both, at 3, though she'd done a very nice job on most of it. Then Dennis was up from 3:10-3:55, with minimal mistakes in the typing, and he took it off to Springer and I tried to put some things away, but decided that I just wanted to read again, so I got into the Lem again, after the mail, which was scattered all around the floor, but I DID EXERCISE again, NEEDING it!! And my desk was still impossible to get into. When Dennis got back he suggested that it was so nice out we go to West Boondock to see some pianist he wanted to see, and we walk across the bridge in a bright twilight about 7:30-8:45, but find there's a private party tonight so the pianist doesn't start until 10. We leave, having passed Trattoria Alfredo which I said I'd like to see, and his snails were good at the start, as were my stuffed zucchini, rather filling, so that his veal cutlet with goodies was good for him and my stronzata (vegetable mixture) with salsa verde (dill and oregano?) and tiny bit of sweet sausage was a good climax, and we staggered out drunk about 11 to get to his place and get into cock and come all over the place, since I wanted it badly, and we sleep exhaustedly.
TUESDAY, 5/8/79: Get involved in sorting things out, wanting to DO something, and maybe THIS was the morning that John wanted to borrow the car so I had to get out at 11 to see how the gate was opened and pick up the rest of the computer stuff from Rolf and have him walk me over while I gave him the programming check for the index that he tossed at me, but that was probably last week sometime, Friday, by best guess, since I wrote Rolf the check on Monday --- though it could have been Tuesday at 10 --- ANYWAY I didn't do much of anything (DID go to the bank!) before getting off to the Surgery with Alice at 1 (see ACTUALISM 11), out at 2:40 and debated a bit going to a movie or something, but decided to get home and WORK, so I started to lay the bathroom rug, again warm out, and in the middle Steve Solomon called and came down to $4600 for his system, seeing that it would be $5100 new, and I phoned Rolf to talk about it, then went back to trimming the rug with scissors, finding it would fit OVER the old rug as a pad because the door would pull it to and fro, and ended up storing the rug over the hallway and scrubbing some of the hall floor so that I wouldn't track over the new rug, and then Dennis called me down for dinner and I figured that since I wasn't doing anything important anyway, I could just as well waste time down there, so I went down and had chicken legs and talked about indexing and drank lots and he smoked and we had sex.
WEDNESDAY, 5/9/79: I'm not doing much lightwork, chat with people on the phone, and spend AGES checking through calendars and datebooks and pages and restaurant lists and diary and 9 receipts for the previous history at Lutece (see LISTS 1), and indexes are coming and going, Andre calls and says he's SO busy he's glad he'd not gotten the Cyclic Nucleotides one, talk to Helen, talk to Larry about changing formats, then Rouslin calls about EFLA tonight, and there's lots of OTHER things, exercised before bathing, including phoning with Equifax again for checking my address, sending out mail and checks, LOTS of things, and get out at 12:15 in my green suit after showering for Lutece and $114 bill that I leave $130 in all for 4: Dennis comes in at 1 to say he's RESIGNED from Tree and we chat about that until Don and Ernie arrive at 1:30, and Dennis's Richiardi and my Kir (served as white wine first) and Ernie's Perrier and Don's drink come to about $8, the half-bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse is $9, the half-bottle Chateau Neuf du Pape is $8.50, Dennis's brilliant Tournedos Chasseur, the best meat by FAR of the day, is $18.94, and my Contrefilet is well-done and tiny compared with the huge slab the favorites had next door, but I thought the shrimp-avocado-vegetable salad was good, Don's paté was only two terrines with the truffle on the wrong side, Ernie's snails were superb, Dennis's mousse of pike almost white and delicate beyond words. Ernie and Don got the same veal scaloppini, good but not spectacular, and the little potato loaves were good, the wine went fast enough, and everyone liked their own desserts: Don the raspberry-mousse-cake, Ernie the chocolate mousse, Dennis the praline cake, and me the Bavaroise, though I didn't remember that the fluffy sauce was over an egg-white rather bland fluffy custard-cup-inverted center. We left just about last at 3:15, but they didn't want to stop, so we window shopped and then landed at the outdoor tables on the corner to have another carafe of white wine which I insisted on paying for (and Don with his typical "largesse" contributed $3 to the $7 wine), and then Dennis wanted us to see his African mask, so we walked up in what felt like blazing heat (and later TURNED INTO blazing heat, with a record 94 F), to 62nd and Second and found the shop and Don could get 20% off, but more importantly told Dennis that it should be "old" though Dennis later told me that that didn't make much difference in the situation at ALL. Rather enjoy cruising all the sexy guys in tee shirts and stuffed blue jeans that walk past the table, and there are even better ones in the streets that make us all glad that summer has finally come. Don has clothes that he wants to sell to us before he takes them down to Englishtown on Saturday, so Dennis decides to go home with them to see what they have, and I continue walking down Second Avenue to 45th Street and then across to the same meeting rooms in which they have the Full Moon meditations in the Carnegie Foundation Building, and I don't get a membership at first, but after chatting with some of the people, seeing the growing membership list, and listening to a reasonably interesting Herbert Mitgang (see ESSAYS 12), I decided to join for $20, ran out to try to grab a cab and almost despaired when an off-duty one stopped and I got across town on 72nd to find the park blocked, so we had to double back to 65th and up to 72nd to get there before the last people wandered in, and there was a very "experiential" session (see ACTUALISM 13) on the Sensory-mental lifebelt for Center 7, and get home to phone Dennis who wants me to come down to see his clothes, which he models for me, and they're nice, though the patchwork-leather coat looks like it needs cleaning of some sort, and he's made new soup, which is nice enough, and we get to bed, maybe having sex, but I can't recall since my mind wasn't on SEX so much this week as WORK on computer-choosing, keeping people busy, and worrying about the book.
THURSDAY, 5/10/79: Get upstairs right after we wake at 7:45 and sort through all the junk from Rolf, not really finding much of value, and Rolf calls to say he wants the car for Sunday, but I said I don't know when I'll have to maybe be picking up Steve's computer, which I feel fairly confident I'll be getting, since it seems better and better to get a SYSTEM THAT'S WORKING than to put together some pieces. Phone lots of people and finally get out at 11:15 for the China series, after having THOUGHT of going shopping at some of the out-of-the-way places FIRST, but just didn't get FINISHED with the phone and scheduling the day, let alone typing diary pages, and Arnie isn't at the Donnell and the series finished as brilliantly as it had started, a fabulous 4 hours. Then walk uptown to Madison and 67th to find that it's MOVED to Lexington and 46th, which is depressing since it's HOT walking in town today, though I enjoy some of the thin-shirted and even shirtless wonders on the street, and walk down Lexington to see a cab burning next to Bloomingdale's, a model posing in a red bathing suit in a construction sand pile for the 63rd Street Subway, and various crowds of people on the streets. The Computer Store is depressingly small, seemingly oriented to programming for custom-hardware systems when someone just doesn't want to by a Pet, and they don't even have anyone I can talk to in programming. Down to the Byte Shop East at 40th and Lexington to find not much better: they try to sell me a Horizon for about $8000, though it could eventually hold about 3-4 terminals, and then I'm down to the Computer Mart on 30th and Madison by 3:40, ahead of schedule though I'd been depressed that walking north might make it impossible for me to see all the places. But Josef Bernard is ugly and friendly and knowledgeable on the Sol he's working on, and the $949 with traction printer seems good enough to print upper and lower case, and he convinces me that the Electric Pencil would be good, but that the OSI computer is faulty, the documentation poor, and the company difficult to work with. Oh. So much for the confidence in Steve's machine. Out about 5:30 and west to get the subway to Don's, after getting a slice of pizza for dinner, and to Don's just at 6 to try on FABULOUS green felt pants, a shortish pair of black felt pants, a gray pair that I can reduce into, so it's 3 pants for $30. Then try a sailor-type short-sleeved shirt in white, and it fits my style so well I take a yellow and a khaki and a blue for $12, then try on some extravagant colors and textures that they say I look good in, so buy 4 long-sleeve shirts that he says would cost $115 each (Pierre Cardin yet) for $24, and then tried on some of his suits but they're just TOO tight, as is the suede coat that he's willing to let go for $100, but I don't like the LOOK of it, and the large collar needs stiffening so it doesn't flop down on the coat-breast. Then try shoes and buy an outrageous pair of black and gray shoes and straw wedgies for $20, and then he tries to sell me a silk shirt for $14, I don't want it, saying I hardly ever dress up, and then he pulls out a suit that he bought for $115 a year ago and has only worn once, and it fits me SO well that I have to take it for $75, and write him a check for $175 and Ernie packs it in a bag while I shower my sweatiness away and we (Don and I) go to the subway together at 7:15 and I get to ATL just at 7:50 and get inside to Dennis saving me his seat (and give him back $7 of the $8 he paid for the tickets in case I didn't have TDF) and we chat about the day and Kenneth Rinker's "40 Second/42nd Variations" starts looking too much like Twyla Tharp for my taste, but it ends up more personal, but more important the MUSIC is spectacular, and I wait for Sergio afterward and ask him WHY it's not being recorded, and he says "Do you have $2000 for it?" and I WISH I did, but I tell him I'm buying a computer, and Kenneth says I should come to the Customs House on Sunday for his free performance at 3 pm. Out at 9:45 having "read Dennis's mind" to have dinner at West Boondock, and I lug my clothes down there and we sit in back and order drinks (but his Warm Puppy is rather a Zolnerzak since the banana liquor cuts the zap of the crème de cocoa) and listen to the piano and try to stomach the pissy smell of his chitterlings (which don't taste THAT bad, but they're not good, either) and collard greens while I savor my tasty ribs and macaroni and cheese, and his hot yam pie is good while my peach shortcake tastes too much like canned to be interesting. Piano player "plays too many notes" and we leave saying that $28 is a bit much, but we're feeling good, walk to the 14th Street subway, and he invites me down and I think we just fall asleep, exhausted, though welcoming his cool sheets from the warmth of the day outside.
FRIDAY, 5/11/79: Phoning Amy and Sherryl to go with us, and Sherryl says she can go about 1, so I'd phoned Steve this morning, saying I got in too late last night to phone, and get notes together and list questions for him and Dennis is ready about 12 and we leave about 1:05 and they take about 10 minutes to lock the gate after it takes me about 10 minutes to get the car started, so we leave Hicks at 1:25 and drive to BQE and LIE to 110 to 25 to Melville to Maplewood to Oak Court at 2:45, and it takes him awhile to get to the door, but we're downstairs to a bulky looking machine which Dennis gets to and starts hitting the "too many string-characters" warning that Steve didn't know about, and then to brag about how putting off power doesn't hurt the disk he orders Sherryl to turn off power, which clobbers the program, and there are other stucknesses that he doesn't understand, and it's not encouraging. He comes down 20%, figuring that 20% of $5100 is $1020 and that reduces it to $4080, which pleases me, since I haven't even STARTED talking money yet. That's all there is to ask: he doesn't seem to have anything like the $1000 in software he was talking about, his sort is only good on five characters, he'll keep the printer no matter what (a sticking point with me), and he can only say that the documentation is "pretty good" and that Stan Veit will tell me that he'll support MY OSI as he supported HIS, so it's a good excuse to leave it up to Stan Veit. We drive back talking about it, Sherryl leads me to the point of route 25 and then we get confused on the way to the Northern Parkway and I find myself barreling down the Interborough Parkway, which looks old and one that I've never seen before, and then we're onto Fulton Street for a VERY colorful drive through Bedford-Stuyvesant with rubbled blocks, lifeless storefront blocks, some rejuvenated areas like some plaza with tenement-front facades preserved ala St. Peter's in Macao, and then the church-dominated theater-less revivalist section seques into downtown Brooklyn and Dennis offers Sherryl dinner but she says she has to take off somewhere, so she gets off at Jay Street and Dennis wants to buy meat for dinner and I'm down Hicks for a car-length before I realize it's the wrong way for driving, so I trundle around Hicks to Pierrepont to Henry to Joralemon to Willow to the lot on State, taking no time at all to lock the gate, and get back to exercise before I shower off all the dust of the day, and then Dennis is cooking chicken legs and after I finish with the mail and talking on the phone I go down there and we talk about his indexing work for a bit and then he serves dinner, saying that if I didn't mind he'd invite someone over for the evening, so he does, and I come upstairs about 10 and decide it's a good evening for films, so I watch 1) John Holmes and it's too "placid and placed" a come, not a sexy GUY, too "contrived," 2) Gallagher is a super guy but NOT exposed dark enough, and a FABULOUS hand-held cum is 90% out of range! Sad! 3) Nova has good stills of a good BODY, but no combo of body and face, and the body looks softish and fattish when he comes, though he DOES have a lovely body and chest and arms. 4) Boxless two guys do nothing but lots of sucking & 69 and guy at end is really HARD, but there's no coming. 5) Monte Hansen is who I come WITH, since he's sexy enough and there's a sustained long LAST cum shot on him. This takes until 12:30, and I wash off the cum and fall totally asleep.
SATURDAY, 5/12/79: Up about 8:30 after having done SOME lightwork, then sort through the stuff that Rolf brought over to find nothing of help in my decision, try to analyze finances to purchase the $7000 Sol system, figuring that it's going to cost that much for the OSI ANYWAY, with no hope of a resale afterwards, since it looks so clunky NOW, and I phone the shop at 10 and leave word for Stan Veit to call, but he doesn't by 11:30 so I phone him again and he says I can come in at 1. Dennis will go with me, but Amy's busy with the index and doesn't want to come now. I get stuff put away, try to do some other things around the house, wash dishes, write quesitons, and then we're off about 12:30 in the rain to Computer Mart and Dennis seems to like the system and Stan tries to be objective about my decision, but it seems clear that the best is the Sol, so we're back now that it's stopped raining and I phone Steve's wife, who gets him to call me and I tell him no, and I guess THIS must have been the morning that I invited Dennis up for brunch at 11:30, Rolf came over to pick up the keys at 11, Arnie came over to get two TDF tickets and stayed to chat all the while we were eating. Start doing the program flowchart, get showered to get downstairs at 5:55 to meet Dennis and work on flowcharts on the subway while we get up to Dana's, and they serve Galliano on ice for a lovely drink, talk about the dogs and the THIRD one that Dana wants to adopt that Jody said he'd move out for, and then they serve sweet and sour meatballs for a filling appetizer and then the chicken Mornay is tasty but VERY filling on rice after two bowls of salad, and I can barely eat the butterballs for dessert. Lots of our Mateus rosé, they get to singing on the piano and Jody has a not-bad voice, and we're out about midnight, both entirely wrecked and too tired to go to Art's party that he'd invited us to: black and white. Home about 1 and buy the Times and we're tired enough to go to our own apartments, and I jerk off with porno again and fall asleep about 2:55 after trying both puzzles.
SUNDAY, 5/13/79: Up with the INCREDIBLE realization that OF COURSE I took the right course with the computer-or-book priorities: the COMPUTER can HELP me with the book!!! Tried to get John to look at the hardware, but he seems to say that anything I'd get would be OK with him, he doesn't have to look at it, but all he needs is $200 a week income and that's it. I finish the puzzles and the rest of the Times and then decide that I MUST get to the notebook pages, so I settle down and type all the pages that I need to for Actualism, then sort out the fragments that I'll need for typing and start right in, though it feels almost like I've gotten VERY rusty since the typing goes so slowly, and with lots of breaks for pissing and talking to Dennis on how to do his index, which he finally got around to (and I make spaghetti that we eat at 6:35). I get 13 pages done by the time I have to leave for "I Capuleti e I Montecchi," and get there at 7:45 and talk to Anthony and Cookie during the single intermission and catch him up on my progress with the computer system, and he seems happiest that I'm doing all the work, and I'm rather disappointed with the opera: I'd heard it the LAST time it was done in NYC over 15 years ago, in April 1964, and it didn't stick with me THEN and it doesn't stick with me NOW: Tatiana Troyanos is butchy as Romeo, but Ashley Putnam has to stretch WAY out of shape to get the highest notes, and most of her passages are so SOFT that it's not terribly thrilling, and Fausto Tenzi appears to have a cold, since his voice seems to go almost completely by the end of the first act, but in the second act he's still singing, so maybe it wasn't serious, but it cut down the joy of the evening. The Grays loved it, as did most of the rest of the audience, and there's no doubt but that Boris Marinovich is a marvelous singer and it was a relief that Julian Robins replaced Louis Lebherz well enough. Next year they're doing "Herodiade" with Crespin and "Maria di Rohan," both of which I'd seen before, so there's little to tempt me into seeing it again next year. Home about 11:30 after crazily debating going to pick up a movie in Times Square, and think to work on the flowcharts but I just settle into bed and jerk off nicely with rubber bands and no poppers and then finish reading Lem's "Mortal Engines" with the last story "The Mask" being quite good about a female robot. Bed about 1:30 with my eyes closing with fatigue.
MONDAY, 5/14/79: Up at 8:30 with an eagerness to make a flowchart of a Sol benchmark problem, and it's raining, Dennis is at work for his last day, and I don't feel like doing much of anything, watch "Love Among the Ruins Part I" 10-11 so when Arnie calls to say that he'd recorded "Cassandra Crossing" and said he might watch it, I said "Now?" and he asked me over. Got him a Times and took about half an hour to trip to the 12th in the St. George Tower to see their display apartments, finding that an office-studio would start at $350, rather much, but some of the higher views would be spectacular. To Arnie's at 11:45 and he jabbers until 12:15, my price of admission, and then I nudge him to put on "Cassandra Crossing" and it's NOT that bad: though there's an implication that there's something ELSE up Lancaster's sleeve which is that he wants EVERYONE killed in the final crash (VERY well done special-effects wise) off the bridge, but they don't show the final disappointment when the people loosened by Richard Harris live. Some nice travel scenes, suspense with the helicopter and the dog, and kooky performances by O.J. Simpson, Ava Gardner, and Martin Sheen. That's till 2:45, and then he wants me to watch "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, but the kids are too amateurish, the situation is MUCH too loaded and soppy about the blacks, so I leave at 3:15 and type a few pages, then watch Part I of "Rich Man Poor Man" with a shirtless Nick Nolte livening the first sequence, which seems VERY anti-German (Edward Asner as an IMPOSSIBLY cruddy father, Dorothy Maguire as an IMPOSSIBLY long-suffering mother), from 4:30-6, then continue with "In Search of" --- which turns out to be King Tut, rather than Sodom and Gomorrah, but I watch it anyway, then Dennis is up at 8 for me to check through his acceptable markings for the Cyclic Nucleotide book to 8:30, when I watch "Irish Treasures" which is rather object-poor except for the Artha Chalice and the Book of Kells and another book and a crosier, and then I watch Television Annual 1978-1979 which is just AWFUL, but I watch it anyway from 9-11, making sausage during it, which somehow alleviates the last of the spaghetti that I ate for lunch along with some of the nutted cheddar log which gave me a FOUL case of the farts. Watch Bennie Hill to pass 11-11:30, and some of his double entendre IS good: "Frigate" "You said it!" And then "Theater of Death" with a turnabout plot in which Christopher Lee is killed by some woman who's a "hemophage" and must drink gallons of blood, who's killed herself in a Grand-Guignol-type play. That goes until 1:20 and I fall asleep wondering WHEN I'm going to WORK!
ESSAYS 8
5/14/79
1979 ASI MEETING
Bill Brietenbach talked about the American Society of Information Sciences, the ASI NY local chapter and Karen Simmons (meeting scheduled for May 29), The Indexer's correspondent John Rigarcy in the US, the directory of COURSES of indexing being published, the ASI Publications Committee formed, and the August 14, 1978 issue of Publisher's Weekly has a nice indexing article. ASI now has a permanent address at 235 Park Avenue, an organizational manual is forthcoming, and Cynthia Weber has done a Guide for Freelance Indexers. We're on the ANSI Z93 committee, and the VP-president elect is George Lewicki, secretary is Jessica Harris, treasurer is Mary Tomaselli, and the directors are Bev Ann Ross and Joyce Post. There's a Liaison Committee, an Indexer Economics Committee, and that's planning a new economic survey. 37 books were considered for the indexing award. Spent $12,000 in 1978 and took in $10,000, that's why the dues went up. Took $14/member for Indexer, mailing, publications, and postage. There's also a book indexing bibliography. Award to "Conversion of Scripts and Transcription" by Wiley written AND indexed by Hans Wellisch, who sent a tape, saying he got his first award 50 years ago when he was 9 years old for the design of a dream home for a children's journal. Indexes are IN Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, most of which were with IBM typewriter balls but the Chinese calligraphy was from the University of Maryland. He ended with a Latin epigraph yet! Business part went on from 9:35-10:21 after coffee. I made out a list of questions: 1) Bibliography on indexing, which I got; 2) Authorities for indexing, and got a list of courses and books used in them and the opinion that there WERE no authorities aside from the indexer; no authority for Acute Myocardial Infraction (AML) for WHICH of four is MAIN! 3) Computerized books and journal indexing, which I might have to get MYSELF; and 4) Indexing DATA, like how many INDEXES/field, how many INDEXERS/field, and how many publishing companies/field, which will still go unanswered. Jessica Harris told me about John Pierce from San Diego in INFORMATION PROCESSING AND MANAGEMENT (1977-1978) having an APL program for computer-assisted book indexing which he'd pass out, and I should contact Jessica if I GET it, though it seems that only a few IBM machines IMPLEMENT APL at all.
Rouslin recommended EFLA and said he'd call me about next meeting.
Was told to write to ASIS (for bulletin and membership) 1010 Sixteenth St. NW, Washington DC 20036, since it would be good for me to read about this.
W. Allan Taylor, Production Division Manager from Engineering Index, Inc. said that he'd send me information about Samantha Information and Publishing Systems from Bethesda, Maryland, and there might be sex involved, too. Whee!
Lillian Wahrow, a librarian from White Plains, told me about MeSH: Medical Subject Heading, put out by the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, and to look in the January issue of Index Medicus for journals in medicine.
I should get on the National Library of Medicine mailing list. Medical dictionaries were listed as Stedman, McGraw-Hill (which lists under Syndrome) and Dorlands, which lists under Syndrome. The Medical Library Association works WITH the National Library of Medicine, the real authority. The American Library Association "Red Book," book of CATALOGING, has chapter which is best, better than Chicago, on NAME stylings for indexes.
Then Jim Anderson, Chairman of the Index Education Committee which put out the list of courses, talked about Structure in Database Indexing, and said that a bibliography on a computer BECOMES a database. He studied the structure of indexes and relationship flexibility. Library catalogs are HUGELY structured indexes. Modern Language Association published bibliographies yearly for 50 years, about 40,000 items/year. Now Database is searchable via Lockheed's Dialogue system. Notation NOT re-arrangeable, and the ELEMENTS are not identifiable. The UNIVERSAL Decimal Classification retains structures, as Dewey many times does NOT. This is larger because it's more structured. CIFT: Contextual Indexing and Faceted Taxonomic Access System follows PRECIS indexing, Preserved Content Indexing system, which died quickly. PETER ROONEY WORKS AT MLA NOW, on control vocabulary. Two prototypes developed and they have KWIC index on titles. "Requiem for a Card Catalog" being planned by automated cataloging, which does NOT imply REPLACING hand cataloging and transmitting of information.
Ruth Blackmore on cumulative indexing: CRIS: Combined Retrospective Index Set. Computerized: 531 journals of 400,000 articles in 570 subject categories. 1.5 million keyword entries in 20 volumes. 14-volume MARC database, 1.5 million subject records, 400,000 subject headings. Library of Congress code. Computerized EVERYTHING, 15 volumes, microfilm and paper printouts. 5.5 million non-marked titles and a million marked titles in 132 volumes. This started with 2000 shoeboxes! Troubles came in
1. Coding books, since ways of dating and page numbering changed through the years,
2. Making skeleton file of references and cross reference headings:
CORPORATION
FINANCE
STATISTICS
INDIA
3. Crosschecking headings: Agricultural product, Agriculture---products, Products---agricultural. Couple hundred shoeboxes needed in skeleton file for 70 years of journals. "It's up to you to decide which heading you prefer."
4. Terminology crosscheck: Porto Rico/Puerto Rico; UN/United Nations; Thailand/Siam.
5. Entries cut with razor blades and scotch-taped onto millions of 3x5 cards (Ireland).
6. Subhead crosscheck after they had been keyworded and alphabetized.
7. Arrange see also cross references: see which ones MOVED or DISCARDED.
They figure it's better to CONTINUE with shoeboxes, with cheap foreign labor.
NO cost figures available, but they DIDN'T do it with hot type for final.
17 people working 2 years for 70 years of a cumulative index. Skeleton file is a matter of MONTHS of work.
Greeted by Emma Richardson for NY Academy of Medicine.
Then Pauline Atherton, Researcher for American Institute of Physics, teaching a class at Syracuse in Abstracting and Indexing, 1971 president of ASIS.
ONLINE LIBRARY CATALOG: Large mass of things to come. System architecture of library networks is underway. AACR-2: Anglo-American Cataloging Rules-2.
REVOLUTIONIZATION of catalogs NOT accepted by ALA, just as PRECIS died at the Library of Congress. University of Toronto FIRST online catalog in N.S. Includes items from the books' indexes: over 5-page range of more than 5 subentries. Free-text technique---Disease? for Disease/Diseases and Colo(u)r for "close" retrieval. Cost $2.50/book or $5/book for overhead to do it. Over 10 pages from RANGE produces a * for "gives lots of information."
Usefulness in Retrieval comes from comparing two different systems:
1) # relevant items found (2/3 items NOT found, and fraudulent items found.
2) # relevant items missed---2 relevant to 1 non-relevant.
3) # non-relevant items retrieved.
4) # matched by another retrieval system: VERY FEW: only 52 of 1000 gotten by both. So the conclusion was: use BOTH systems for the present.
Then she studied index ERRORS (and said something about the April Indexer),
a) Indexing density, the number of index pages/number of pages, which was POOR, though the post-1966 input was better, there was an AVERAGE 2.9 entries/page.
b) Indexing coverage was poor when it didn't cover illustrations or tables.
c) Locators (ANSI versus Chicago versus others) were poor and in different form: 92ff, 92 passim, and 92 was judged POOR when they meant 92-98, though they liked 92 as indication for whole chapter, in bold face. 60% of the indexes had 10+ locators WITHOUT subentries, judged to be too large.
d) Many had subject indexes which completely ignored NAMES.
e) NO see and see also studies taken, no LC subject headings taken. She said the National Library of Medicine program AID gives free-text RANKED MeSH index lists to discriminate. Preschel said there ARE companies that have indexing programs.
Then Bernice Heller, the new president, spoke from 3:50-4:30, saying ASI started in 1968 with 5-6 people interested in themselves, but their current goal was to double the 47 entries for the contest for next year and to double the 300-400 members we now have, so everyone bring in one. Aim: try to get indexing assigning out of PRODUCTION department and into EDITING, so that there's more understanding of the PROFESSIONALISM of indexing. There's a business meeting of the New York Chapter (which they say I'll get mail about) on May 29 at 5:30 at AICPA 5th floor at 1211 6th Avenue, which is at 47th Street, and there's going to be a short business meeting and something else which I didn't get. Seems to be lots doing on the organizational indexing front these days, and I hope I'm not too late to PROFIT from it!
TUESDAY, 5/15/79: Up at 8:30 after sketchy lightwork, shitting and putting stuff away before the second part of "Love Among the Ruins" from 10-11, which seemed to be cut somewhat to allow more commercials, and talk to Art Bauman who's down with food poisoning and had a good party, Helen Ferguson who thinks I should study other indexes and that she can't adopt Dorothy Thomas' rules for "in," Larry Meyer to change Amy's date and my zip code, Amy about her indexing and my buying-date, Pope about my buying-date and doing astrology on my computer, Arnie about a couple of things, Dennis about this evening's dinner, and then it's time to make lunch of tuna and noodles and macaroni just to get rid of things, and talk to Donald Cohen while it's cooking, and he's VERY disappointed we're not going to conquer the indexing world TOGETHER, though what he thought he had to offer I'm not quite sure. And get down to typing some more pages until 4, when I watch an AWFUL Beatle's special narrated by David Frost which essentially just has people like Melanie and Melissa Manchester and David Payton-Clark (or whoever) and others singing the Beatles while stupidly amateurish graphics flash on and off in back. Switch thankfully to "Rich Man, Poor Man" at 4:30, and save for the fire that was rather stupid, and more of Nick Nolte when he's in a bathtub seduced by the maid, it's getting rather boring. Off at 6 and continue with typing, finishing 11 pages by 7:30, glad to be caught up at last, now for vacuuming! Dust and vacuum, feeling perfectly content that I don't seem to need the radio going to occupy my mind, and bring the telephone along so that when Dennis calls, which he does at 8:45, I can say I'll phone Amy to see if she wants to come over, and she doesn't, and we chat about Dennis's lack of dynamic which has everyone doing things for HIM (as when they went to buy pizza and when Dennis and I do practically anything), and I finish vacuuming and get downstairs about 9:30, and of course he has no wine since I didn't bring any down, and he reminds me of a conversation where we agreed that he did most of the cooking and food-buying, and NOW we agree that I do all the booze buying. Back with an inferior white that I doctor up with Frangelico and Praline after orange juice only makes it taste like grapefruit juice, and his chicken jugged with pepper is VERY peppery, yet tasty, and the 3.5 hours of cooking has made the chicken deliciously tender though somewhat dry. We eat and drink and talk and he wants to get into his cock, but by the time we're ready for bed about 12:30, all we want to do is sleep, so we do that.
ESSAYS 12
5/15/79
FIRST EFLA MEETING
Herbert Mitgang, who's rather Jason Robards-ish, spoke from 6:05-7 pm. He's a publishing reporter for the New York Times, started as a stringer for the Brooklyn Eagle. Broken in on NY Times by LV. Updegraff ("Uppie") as desk person. Facts checked ONLY by PRIMARY (no World Almanac) PRINTED (no phone calls) sources. EFLA good for professionalism, respect, and increased pay! Everyone applauded. He's active in Author's Guild, best writers in a country of 40,000 books per year and 1000 publishers, but it's CHANGING. Emphasis on BIG books will HARM the industry. Medium publisher publishes 50/year, hopes for 2-3 biggies, 10 paying their own way, and the others that will fall by the wayside.
ITT tells Bobbs-Merrill: no more fiction, only Irma Bombeck and her ilk. Ilk!
William Shallcross, writing against selling of Cambodia, will NOT be sought by NBC's "Today" that pays 1/2 million to Kissinger, who's IN the book as villain. William Paley to Erica Jong on "Fear of Flying" "I like your earnings!"
Individual imprint books are a GREAT thing for imaginative publishing.
Conglomerates get REVENUE and EGO trips from owning publishing companies: "Erica Jong and John Hershey work for me."
American Express, buying McGraw-Hill: "We're big on coffee table books, buy 'em now on your card and pay for 'em later."
Don Fine, of Arbor, feels secure under new company (Harper?)
Yale MBAs insist on publishing house studies: Fire secretaries and have POOL.
Conglomerates to authors: Now give up ALL (world/reprint/all) rights to stuff.
Conglomerates have to come up with long- and short-range TARGET GROWTH, not imagination.
Author's Guild pleading with Antitrust Committee and Federal Trade Commission AGAINST conglomerate ownership of publishing companies. Cost cutting will REDUCE freelance work: as will more COMPUTER work. Author'll feed his OWN book into a computer. "We cannot resist mechanics/progress."
NY Times: "Yeah, I guess it is proofread---I guess SOMEONE proofreads it."
New York Times Book Review closes 12-15 days before published. Editors are now editing on machines. "We all work with green bugs---who knows where they go?"
Something that sounded like Teleram. Longman's puts in Production Staff on title pages of all books.
Mass-market racks are TEAMSTER controlled, and VERY rough to get best status for independent books, there are PAYOFFS for spots. See on newsstands: WHICH are in front and WHICH in back, from marketing. Then have to FIGHT your way into Walton and Dalton to CARRY your books.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston will NOT publish a CBS expose.
Nor will Times Books explore "How Times front page is made up."
Angel-Cameron and Little-Brown may have suffered during Vietnam, but not much now.
"I helped break blacklist on Pete Seeger" in 1966, 12 years after McCarthy, when he produced "Lamp Unto My Feet" and "Look Up and Live" for CBS against its "Program Practices" committee.
EFLA should write to book review editors and get indexes MENTIONED in reviews.
MANY reasons for acknowledging ACQUIRING EDITOR, but not for LITERARY EDITORS.
SOME CRT workers had cataracts, but it's not KNOWN to be a health hazard.
Since I left at 7:35 when the questioning was over, I didn't have a chance to join the meeting afterward of the individual specialties, but they told me there'd be another meeting sometime in June, they thought, and I filled out an application form that said indexes---all subjects---computerized and manual, and then brought back their March 1979 directory of members, which included 245 members through May, of which fewer than 1/4 were men: 56, and 19 MENTIONED indexing AFTER others, 8 had indexing BEFORE others, and only 5 had indexing ONLY: DeSpain "all subjects"; Palmer "all subjects," Reit; Rouslin "books and periodicals. Subjects: analytical competence in anthropology, linguistics, psychology, biology, biochemistry, physiology, and medical science fields"; and Saffir. No indexers NEAR Brooklyn Heights, and only Badendyk, Flanagan, Labrun, Moberg, and Tucker live in 11201 who do editing work. There just looks like LOTS of stuff to get together and DO!
WEDNESDAY, 5/16/79: I wake at 7:30 to piss, then do rather complete lightwork before he wakes about 8:45 and we start to cuddle and he really gets into his cock and I get into mine and we jerk off nicely, him taking my come and messing it around in his cock until he comes into his fist, allowing me to stroke and stroke it until we're both practically dry, and I say I have to get upstairs --- no, decide to look through his Voice and old New Yorkers while the cooking soup with the pepper chicken makes me hungry, so he makes a spring-like green pepper and onion omelet at 11, which we eat with the last of his baked bread, and I'm upstairs "this morning" at 11:45 to start washing the french-door windows, then the kitchen window, then decide to go the whole way and do the bedroom, then the wire in the living room, then the one nearest the bedroom, each getting harder and harder as there are more plants to move. Tried getting in touch with Computer Mart to ask about the benchmark but there's no luck. Phoned Duke Gardens about reservations (after I left word with Don last night and he phoned at 8:10 this morning and Dennis had to remind me that I'd phoned about Ernie taking the second of the ABT tickets that Dennis didn't want), Helen about indexing and she says I should get names of medical companies who matter, so I phone Sylvan and his librarian says she'll mail me a list, and phone Wahrow in White Plains who reads me a list, and then phone Susan who says we'll have lunch on Thursday, and then Amy's ready with her indexing and I go over after changing my shirt only to check her marking from 3:45-4:30, then start watching part of "Rich Man, Poor Man" part 3, but it gets boring enough so that at 5 I start looking at her index again, glancing up for the spectacle of fights and shirtlessness, and finish at 6:30, taking JUST the two hours she estimated it'd take, and she said "I LIKE sitting watching TV in my apartment" (hm) and said that Adam and I should talk since he's always doubting Actualism. I know where he is! Back at 6:45 still trying to get Dennis, and finish the last window, even to putting up the fallen hanger and putting out Jean Ream's mushroom-eye painting from the "treasure chest" after I dusted it for the first time since I moved in here! Fell GOOD about all being done (and noting what has to be done TOMORROW, gladder and gladder I didn't buy the computer now, so that I can catch up now, not next week, when Mom would be here), and down to Dennis's at 7:30 to have his soup, and he'd gotten his contacts and will work on his index this evening, so I get upstairs at 9 to watch Feld on Dance in America, and his "Intermezzo" ends with those spectacular lifts and whirls that I'd forgotten, his "La Vida" to "Danzon Cubano" --- no, "Danzon Cubano" is to "Danzon Cubano," "La Vida" is to "El Salon Mexico," both by Copland, and Gregory Mitchell is dark and cocky and strong as his new lead dancer, though Feld still looks slender and competent as he tosses Sarry around in "Intermezzo," and "America" is just fabulous, guys looking VERY sexy with white tights crammed full, sexy tee-shirts in blue with white stars, and the white tights with the red side-stripe look elegant and footbally and sexy all at the same time. Great work. Then turn to "You Can't Take It With You" with its anti-democratic message that you shouldn't work if you don't have to, and Grampa is relieved of 22 years of back tax-paying by remarking that the milkman that they buried 8 years ago was buried in HIS name, so he's dead now and might even get a refund. Mr. Kirby seems to be a member of the family, the Grand Duchess (played softly by Mildred Natwick) serves blintzes, Art Carney has all he wants, and even Jean Stapleton fits in with her wackiness. Dennis isn't up at 11, as he'd said he'd be after he stopped working, so I shower and wash my hair and shave for tomorrow, then wash off the waterpik and scour the sink, then phone him at 12:20, and he says he fell asleep. Oh. Read "Ultimate City" from "Low-Flying Aircraft" by Ballard from 12:20-1:40 and, eyes closing at last, fall asleep to odd dreams.
THURSDAY, 5/17/79: Lists and tests and talks and computers in dreams, but I don't jot them down and don't remember them. Up at 9 to shit, nail up the painting, and scrub the kitchen and all other floors TWICE, just to make sure they're clean for ME during the week before Mom comes (and pleased with the thought that the apartment will be NEARLY clean, but not with the obvious "cleaned for your arrival" look --- more a LIVED-IN look that she can mess up and I won't be concerned about), and had scoured the tub from 9:30 to 10, and finish with that just before 11, so decide to type these 3 pages before dressing in MY NEW SUIT to wow Susan when I have lunch with her in 45 minutes. Shoes begin to pinch even before I reach the subway, but the cut of the suit feels so good that I feel good. Susan's on the phone, so I go next door and chat with Ginny, and when I mention that Dennis said "We haven't heard from Ginny for awhile" she said "There's just been nothing done," and later Cynthia Hausdorff said that Harper was definitely on a CYCLE, and that work was usually available during or toward the end of summer (though I find that the Basic Language books were being done in March and April and May). Ginny gives me the address of "time-sharing condominiums" in Cancun for which she paid $3300 for an apartment that's now worth $6600, pays $100 extra a month for maintenance, and has for two weeks of a year in which she can trade one or two of the weeks for other places in Italy, Hawaii, Florida, Ireland, and a few other places, saying that it's a VERY big idea in Europe. Susan's off the phone about 12:30 and loves the suit, and then she takes me across to Pippins for lunch, where I have fairly good knockwurst and sauerkraut but her hamburger-swiss-bacon sandwich is just spectacular (though it should be for $4.95!), and her bloody mary and my kir bring the meal up to about $22 with tip, which I pay for in return for going back to the office, having her tear out 3-4 indexes for my examples, saying that the computer type font seems fine, but she can't see "in" as a separate subentry. She gives me the Managing Editor of college and the Copy Chief of Trade and I go down to see Cynthia Hausdorff and Bob Guinzberg comes in, and later I find that I worked with him back in November 1977 on Darley and Spriesterbach, and it was Lois Lombardo for American Government and Pam Landau for Changing Styles in Marriage. Meet a fat editor (freelance) who takes my name though I don't get his, and then about 3:30 I'm down to the 40th Street library (main closed today but phone info said they had medical books) and get 13 copies of the 13 index-styles for 13 companies, interesting, and that takes until 7:10, at which time I zip across to the subway and up to meet Ernie (after meeting Maureen on the steps) for ABT, and Bissell is angular, cute, and developingly good in "Bayadere" in which the corps did QUITE a nice job, but the audience seemed rather quiet about it (though one of the front-line women DID bobble so far that people around me gasped), and Jolinda Menendez wasn't that magical as the woman. "Spartacus" was substituted for "Three Preludes" because Kirkland injured herself on Monday, as Mark Eliot said during intermission, and Meehan wasn't strong enough to throw around D'Antuono with élan, so it looked strained, though he WAS pretty-of-face to look at, but his legs aren't that great. "Undertow" was the bomb Mark predicted it would be, though Bujones leaped around with angst and Gregory played a good harpy. I'd thought I'd seen it long ago with Wilson and Scott Douglas, but it turned out I saw it for the first time in 1975 with just about the same cast. Schumann's music is just awful. Then the second Tudor of the evening "Tiller in the Field" is somewhat better, but only marginally: Tcherkassky is piquant except when she has to show her pregnancy 2 hours after losing her virginity, and Loring is cute in a Bissell-way, and they seem to be pushing new men into the repertory. This lasts until 11, and I say I'm due at Dennis's for dinner, so Ernie leaves and I phone Dennis and he's making dinner, so I have dinner with him and we probably get into bed without having sex, since it'd be about 1 anyway, though we have sex SOME of these times, though I'm primarily preoccupied with my computer problems.
FRIDAY, 5/18/79: Wake with a VIVID dream that I recall enough of by midnight to write the following notes on it: In a contest on a metal scooter, propelled by twisting the horizontal metal bar handle, steering it by turning it, and guiding the front roller over obstructions. Drive down "golf course/Army post/chemical dump" side roads and get lost, then to a small town where there's BILL HYDE, looking very sexy with short (and more) hair, who hugs me and lifts me into the air into a sort of 69 position and starts people whispering about our sexuality. Everyone buys "a chance" and gets a feather for their pocket and MY "chicken feather" is drawn for the prize and I win $10. Then the TOP prize is won by me also, a check for $100 with some sort of bill stapled to it, and I'm embarrassed to be a stranger and win these prizes, but they all seem to like me and then I take off on my scooter, looking at my map and seeing there's only about 5 hours of scootering through New Jersey to get to NYC. A cheery, fun dream, and I resolve to buy a chance at the ABT raffle when I go there with Mom next Thursday! We wake and maybe have sex and I get out to get Kidney International to proofread from 11-2:30, bringing back meat and wine and dry cleaning along the way back, phoning corrections in immediately, and upstairs to finish "Utilitarianism, For and Against" that I'd almost finished last night on the subway, then wash dishes to completely finish off what I'd started, finishing the cleanup before Mom gets here. Then there was probably mail, eating, and one of these days I jerked off in the chair and enjoyed it a lot, phoning people about indexing, but I didn't seem to be able to concentrate on specs for the computer --- may have looked at it and worked on it some, but I just felt an aversion to doing anything on it. Phoned Mom in the morning, I think, and said that I wanted to borrow $3000, and by coincidence Denny's folks were picking her up to take her to Newark tonight for a choral recital of his, so she said she'd ask Rita to see if she AND Rita could come up with $3000, since Mom wouldn't have anything available until a $5000 CD comes up on July 1. I felt vaguely like writing, but it wouldn't come together. Maybe I tried lightwork, but that didn't really seem to work either. Then Dennis got back from getting his contacts, or something, and we chatted and left for "Casanova" and got great subway connections so we got off at 87th and shopped for coat racks for him, to no avail. He shopped in the bookshop next door after I ran through the sci-fi racks at Barqu, then we entered to a LONG train of previews, after I glanced through their new summer schedule, and then "The Existentialist" was fun, walking backward through NYC and photographing the whole thing backwards so it looked like HE was going forward and the WORLD was going backward. But "Casanova" wasn't fun: Fellini was trying to be anti-erotic, or purely visual without plot line, or disgusting, or totally hedonistic, but there was no redeeming social value: everything was grotesquerie of face and figure and makeup, lavishness of sets and costumes, and ritualized couplings that made NO attempt to be realistic: pumping without the VAGUEST possibility of being sexually joined, and Sutherland's fleshy body with his strange white camisole-brassiere was a total turnoff: the sexiest part was a pastily-pretty ballet-boy being fondled by some horrible nobleman in a primitive opera. Dennis left at 8:30, saying he couldn't stand it, and I got out at 9:35 and decided to see "Voideville," so I subwayed down to the BMT and got off at 12th and went over to get my ticket at 10:10 and then dashed down to the Ukrainian restaurant for a #1 with a half-carafe of passable rosé wine, a decent salad with bleu cheese, and lots of mediocre food with spiceless sausages that I DON'T think was kielbasa, as on the menu. Vaguely interesting people to watch, then gulp down food and dash to theater at 10:45 to be there before the doors opened, so I got a seat 4 off the center in the first row, good to see the red-eyed MC Gordon Bressack, the reasonably talented Ruby Lynn Reyner with the brilliant eyes, Dildo the Clown with cocks all over, rather outrageous (Michael Arian), the Surrogates who were mainly Michael Dane with a nice body, neck collar, leather jockstrap, and ballet dancer's legs that did entrechats across the stage. Others that I didn't get was the newscaster (Tom Murrin?) who was rather outrageous, and a comic of STAGGERING poor taste and quick-change skills. I laughed a lot, looked at a lot of crotches, thought it was outrageous, and couldn't figure WHAT audiences were looking for in MUSIC, since most of it was so TERRIBLY amateurish and mawkish. Out at 12:45 and subway home in the rain to mess around for more time and get to bed around 2, feeling strange.
SATURDAY, 5/19/79: Wake about 10 (Oh, Rolf called me yesterday for the car on Sunday and was PISSED to hear that John had reserved it for the weekend. I told him I was sorry and would tell him about it in the future, but when John told me about it 2 months ago it didn't seem worthwhile to mention it at ALL. But Rolf came over to give the keys to John and John gave me the keys to water his plants), phone Pope and chat on his birthday, which turns out to be his 55th, and then mope around reading the mail and other things and watch the start of "The New Healers" in Tanzania and US but get turned off when it's just "barefoot doctors" rather than "faith and light" as I'd hoped, and get out at 2:30 to buy wine for dinner and meat --- no, bought THAT yesterday --- (FORGOT that I'd WORKED 3 hours on Kidney proofreading yesterday, so I penned it on NOTEBOOK 60) --- to buy groceries getting back at 2:55 to find Sherryl on the steps waiting to check over the Inflammation book, so we chat about it from 3-3:30 and she decides to take it. Fuck around, maybe jerking off again, and then at 5 watch part of the Mixed Pairs Gymnastics championships (for not much, one vault for a championship!?), and that's over at 6, at which time Bruce comes over to get a body session (see ACTUALISM 13) after we chat about computers for a bit, and he's done from 7:10-8:10 and gets dressed and I put on "The Hobbit" which he stays to watch, and it's SO much better than "The Lord of the Rings" (being done mainly in Japan, it seems) that it was a REVELATION of what animation can be like for sword-and-shield thrillers. I put on the pork shoulder at 8:30, watch the fairly boring "Eternal Return" (I'd had down that I'd seen it twice, but I didn't at ALL recall the ugly dwarf half-brother of the stunning Jean Marais, nor his incessant listening at keyholes and crying for mother despite his 23 years, and they just lay down and died next to each other, and I remember the thing ending on the SHIP, so maybe it was cut? Have pork while watching "55 Days at Peking" from 11:30, but it drags and drags and I'm feeling more and more tired, and it's scheduled to go until 2:44, so about 1 I conk out and go to bed, maybe to jerk off again, since I've been feeling horny and out-of-it and disgusted with myself for not WORKING so much these days.
SUNDAY, 5/20/79: Wake about 9:30 and out for the Times and read it all and work both puzzles with ease and hamburger cooking during the Feld ballet, since Dennis phoned about 12:30 to ask what was going on and I asked him if he wanted to see Kenneth Rinker at the Custom House and he said no, he was working on the index, and so I finished reading the Times and watched all of Feld again, and it started with a flashy Sarry in "Excursions," than 2) "Intermezzo," 3) "Danzon Cubano," 4) "La Vida," 5) "Real McCoy" "Blues" section, 6) "Santa Fe" excerpt with Gregory Mitchell in shadowed-crotch tights, so it must have been originally done for Baryshnikov, and 7) "Halftime" with the Gould "Formations" and the fabulous sexy costumes for the guys. Great to be able to see it again. That's over at 4, I finish reading "Total Orgasm" that I'd started a couple years ago, had looked through "The Anatomy Coloring Book" before, too, and then showered and got dressed in tan slacks and straw-shoes and dark-brown Don-shirt for meeting Dennis downstairs at 6:20 to get to George's JUST at 6:30 as he was taking down the garbage and Paul was in the shower. The apartment is a fantasy of lavender walls, emerald-and-gold empire cushions on the chairs, walls full of Paul's stage-design collection, tables full of George's calling-card, snuff-box, crystal, bibelot, silver, book, and everything-else collection, including a tented bedroom in strengthened cotton with a reconstructed Napoleon-type bed, and all sorts of magazines, chests, vitrines, ormolu-decorated woodwork, and so much other stuff that it seemed impossible to take it all in --- let alone DUST it. Sexy blond quiet Jim (Paul's friend) came in with Tony, loud and brash and Italianate-Jewish and monopolizing the conversation about the Dakotas with Dennis, and we drank and looked around and then served asparagus that savored my urine for a few days, with chopped nuts and a vinaigrette, then beef that I thought was gristly, extraordinary carrots, and potatoes that were not much, then a strawberry-and-custard dessert that took the awfulness of the red-wine taste out of my mouth (3 bottles for 6 people), with 2 bottles of white before and almost finishing the strawberry liquor after, and we sat and talked until 11, when suddenly Dennis said he was ready to go home, and it turned out to be almost the perfect time, since we all left, looking at Paul's collection and writeups in magazines, and we left thinking it was great, and I went down to Dennis's and we chatted and got to sleep about 1.
MONDAY, 5/21/79: Upstairs at 9, when we woke, ostensibly to work, but I STILL didn't feel like getting into it, so I finished reading "Low-Flying Aircraft" and read ALL of "Cromptom Divided," and LOVED it so much that I gave it to Amy to read when she was over the next day, and then watched another fairly boring excerpt of "Rich Man, Poor Man" where Rudy was now out of partnership in his company and running for office, his wife lost the baby, and the brother was still knocking about in ships getting in trouble. That went to 6, then I finished reading "Drown Therapy" and felt good about all I was reading and AWFUL about how much work I WASN'T doing. Got a call from Rita saying that SHE (collect) would loan me $2000 at 8%, starting now, and that Mom should be called, which I did at 6 and found she was going to loan me $1000 starting about June 3, so I get back to specifications for a bit and find that it's HARD, and decide that I have to RETURN to the format of adjective-noun for main entry and can't STAY with adjective-alone, and maybe THIS is contributing to my lethargy: here's something that I'll now be CHANGING that I had decided was RIGHT to do for a period of years. Lots of stuff attached to it, I guess. Also got a call from Elaine Claudio saying that she and Pat were looking for body sessions, and would I be available on Fridays or Mondays, and I said OK except for THIS week, and she's going away anyway, so they'll be calling for BOTH of them to get sessions consecutively. Dennis wanted to come up at 6, but it got later and later and finally he was up at 7:30, so we looked through part of his cards, fairly decent for such a difficult book, but I haggled and hassled and SAID that I was depressed because I had to change the way I looked at things (even though it made it MUCH easier for the computer program, which almost DEMANDS to be done word-by-word, which is interesting. We stop at 8 and watch "The Body Human, The Sexes" with a flash of an erection on a heat-sensitive camera and an inner view of a vagina in orgasm, livening the uterus WAY up, and then he leaves and says he has to work, having finished the ham, and I cook corn --- I guess I work with him from 9-10 also, since I remember asking him to turn on the Obies, and watch that from 10-12, someone named Worrilow talking himself out of ANY future job off or off-Broadway, I suspect, and get to bed to jerk off with a splash and then STILL feel like reading, so I read part of "Carnival," the first 56 pages, from 1:10-1:55, and then I'm falling asleep, so I do so.
TUESDAY, 5/22/79: Wake about 9 and try to do some lightwork until about 9:30, but it just doesn't FEEL right. More doubt currently than ever before. Out and water my plants and Dennis phones and comes up to check the rest of his cards from 9:30-11, and then I'm down for the mail and phone people and talk to Amy and decide that Old Hungary would be a nice place for Mom's dinner on Friday, and I put things away and touch up a few things in the apartment and maybe even jerk off, and then Amy comes over at 3:15 to check HER cards until 5:45, getting punchy toward the end, and she has to go to a Tai-Chi class and Bob Abrami had called around 3 and wanted a body session as soon as possible, so I say 6, and hop into the bathtub at 5:45 after telling Arnie that I'd call him back, and Bob buzzes at 5:52, sitting in the hallway until I dry myself off, and we chat a bit about his friendship in television and acting with Eugene Evans (Gene from class 2) and then he's onto the table about 6:10 and off about 7:10 and he leaves pretty quickly after, having paid $7.50 (see ACTUALISM 13), and then I water John's plants and am talking on the phone with Arnie when Amy buzzes at 8:15, saying that she'd love to go down to Dennis's for spaghetti, so we're down about 8:30 and he's rushing around cooking and she's telling about her new form of reading in trance, and Dennis does LOADS of bread with garlic that we eat ALL of, and have a VERY friendly dinner, GREAT feelings, and Dennis gets back to typing and we're upstairs reeling a bit with wine, but I say I can finish, so we do from 11:15-12:30, she breaks a wine glass, at least up to Substance P, which is where SHE stopped, and she leaves and I feel like jerking off, so I do, and then sleep.
WEDNESDAY, 5/23/79: Do lightwork but am SO torn with things to do that I get out of bed about 9:30 and put on hamburger and put the dishes away from last night and have something to eat. Start working on diary pages and Dennis comes up from 1-2:50 to go (no, I go down to HIM) through his pages, and he leaves and I'm upstairs with everyone's mail and continue reading and typing 7 pages and talking on the phone, and it seems that the time just GOES: Phone Barbara and tell her to bring the Academic Press writeup tonight to class, phone Pope and Susan and Amy and clear meeting at Old Hungary on Friday at 6:30, unless I call them that it's later, try phoning Rolf but there's no answer, call Sherryl and Sylvan to tell them to keep the adjectives in front of the nouns as main entries, talk to Larry Meyer telling him to be nice to Dennis, and Larry's given me yet another index to do, and I watch "Rich Man, Poor Man" last episode (8) from 4:30-6, putting on the ham for dinner, and it seems rather gratuitous that the "Poor Man" boxer misfit-brother should become the rich-in-love brother and then be KILLED, while the "Rich Man" adjusted brother should be reconciled with his alcoholic wife and sail away from the sunset on his brother's yacht. Hear the gate slam as Dennis comes in and telephone him, get a busy signal, figure he may have left the phone off the hook, ring him back again to get silence, and then his startled "Hello," and he'd just called ME. He decides to come up, so I put on water for the corn to boil, and we have good ham and the rest of the applesauce and good corn, and I leave about 7:15 and get to Actualism in the pouring rain, everyone in and out quickly (see ACTUALISM 14) and home to buy a gallon of sangria and wake Dennis up, who's gone downstairs to sleep after having been up all last night, and we sit around talking about his indexing qualifications and how he'll be doing the Obstetrics index next, and he asks some intelligent questions about how entry/subentry/sub-subentry can be related (and simply enough it's ABC, CBA, and the others are awkward!). Then we're in to bed about 12:30 and he's too tired to do anything and we cuddle for a bit, chatting, and drift off to sleep about 1 am, looking forward to sex the next morning. Feel good about lightwork, so I go off unguiltily.
THURSDAY, 5/24/79: Wake early and do a thorough session while dreaming lots of dreams about amusement parks (with rides with names like Hammer-Schlammer or Hammacher-Schlemmer) and other pleasant things, and when I finally look at my watch it's 9:45, so I say I HAVE to get up, and upstairs saying he should come up so that I can finish my ham with him, and put things away from last night and he comes up and I put on the ham, going over to water the plants in John's apartment so Dennis can ogle his grass, his polished floor, his mirror in the bedroom, and practically everything else about his apartment. Over to eat from about 11:30-12, then I type about 2 pages and decide I really have to shower, so I do that, and I'd decided to defrost the refrigerator, too, the last thing that had to be done, and wash my hair and clean out the shower very well, so that she can use it, and put out new towels and get laundry ready to be taken out (and gave the garbage to Dennis to take), and worry about not being finished with the whole thing when Mom calls at 3:25 and says she's at the airport, so I finish making the bed with clean sheets for her, then dress in the suit which is uncomfortable on the warm humid day, and take out four implements: bag of Chinese laundry, bag of regular laundry, bag of index for Sherryl who's meeting me at the East Side Airlines Terminal between 4 and 4:15, and umbrella in case it rains. The train is slow and I get to East Side about 4:30, sweating, and there's Sherryl to take the index (and forget to give me the check) and Mom's sitting with her feet propped up on the suitcase. We talk for about 10 minutes about how she woke up at 6:30 to leave the house at 10:30, took a cab to the limo to the limo to the airport to the airport to the terminal, and I get across the street to grab a cab from the street, giving him written directions to the World Trade Center, but Mom sees it and says something about Windows on the World, and we go down the East Side Highway and then he takes off on Fulton Street and leaves us off in the plaza, so I take the time to show her the plaza and she gets some guy to take our picture with the flowers around the central sculpture platform, then we're up to the restaurant where I check her suitcase and umbrella, check the Jersey view, then the Statue of Liberty lounge, then the bar, and then we get seated way against the back, and we have a wallbanger and a kir, and when Mom goes to the john and takes a picture, I request a table change, so we're down closer, which is brighter, though in fact it doesn't have the "panorama" that we had, like of the prow of a ship, of the whole of the island from river to river. Sun comes for a bit and a waiter takes our picture at the window, and then she shares my Quenelles de pike and sole in champagne sauce, rather like sausage under cream, tasty, then she likes the salad, and she has Glazed Turban of Sole with Scallops and mushrooms (which we barely saw), but it was good, and my crisp duck with peppercorns was tasty with good sauce, and I ordered half a bottle of Moet and Chandon for $11 which she said she'd have none of and had two glasses of, while I finished her wallbanger, and she didn't want dessert so I got the Strawberry Bavarian cream which she liked, and a snifter of Grand Marnier that she likes when she holds her nose. Out at 7:15 hoping to have lots of time, and we just can't get a cab after the 7th Avenue station at Vesey Street is closed at 7 pm IN the building and we can't find it OUTSIDE the building. Walk almost up to Chambers Street to FINALLY get a cab, and then the rain starts lightly (thank goodness it didn't spoil our view, though the clouds were rather spectacular and gray and pink), and we're outside the entrance at JUST 8 pm, so we dash across to the Met and DASH into the elevator and CURSE at it to lift off, and DASH to our seats --- to find Dennis not yet there! Quick look at the program to find they start with "Fall River Legend" and Dennis puffs up right as the lights dim. Cynthia Gregory is rather nice as Lizzie Borden, and Lucia Chase is demonic as the stepmother, and no one else has anything much to do, and it goes ON and ON and ON to not very interesting Morton Gould music until about 8:55, and then the lights don't go on because the evening is so long they go right into the "Sylvia Pas de Deux" which is genteely under-danced until Kevin McKenzie so slips in the fishtail with Martine van Hamel that she has to put her two hands down to catch herself! Tsk, tsk, smiles all around and just as tacky as can be. Out to chat about the dinner and the dance, then back at 9:37 for "Contredances," which might be better if it were to anything but the Webern music --- Dowell gets gasps when he strolls then horizontally leaps offstage, Makarova does some fiendishly fast turns that make ME gasp, and there are some stunning lifts, but most of the Tetley choreography seems too antic and not enough romantic for my taste. The chorus was back there somewhere, but I concentrated on the two principals, thereby possibly missing the "contre" of "dances." Then the finale was "Theme and Variations" with Bujones and Elliott, sadly not doing nearly so well as she did in "Push Comes to Shove," but Bujones did some nice leaps and ended it on a Tchaikovsky flair at 11:05, one of the LONG evenings. Down all the way to the subway and Mom keeps asking us to walk slower, and Dennis confesses that he has a date, will change it if I mind, and then he gets off at 34th Street and we get an express right away and get home before midnight, stopping off to buy milk, and I tell her where everything is and give her the number to call when she gets up, after 9, and she says not before ten, and I get a message that Amy wants to check her index tomorrow. Down to Dennis's to notice that the floor is wet with water and bed at 12:30, tired.
FRIDAY, 5/25/79: Wake when he gets in, nuzzling, then to hear the radio buzzing when it seems he turned the alarm to the wrong station, but when it continues I get up and it's coming from the refrigerator extension sunk in water, and I take it out and THEN have to get up to shut off the water again. Damn! Mom rings at 9:30 and I get up to phone Amy over at 10:30, we have bacon and eggs and juice for breakfast, chatting, and Amy's over about 10:40 after I brush my teeth, and they chat and we start about 11 and finish about 1, she leaves, Mom wants soup so has some lentil soup and I make curried tuna on raisin toast for lunch, and then we talk until I go to the bank and buy groceries and pick up laundry and buy meat and back to chat, then I type 3 pages, shower, and finish up this page by the time to leave for dinner at 6:10. Simply can't resist doing HIGHLIGHTS of the days: Old Hungary was fun with me and Susan and Amy and Mom and Dennis, and everyone bought wine and Galliano and brought it back here and proceeded to get marvelously drunk, Mom having a great time and they all left about 1 am, to everyone's delight.
SATURDAY, 5/26/79: Hangover and Mom didn't want to decide on a play, so we went for the 3 pm showing of "Hanover Street" to find that it started at 2, so we went in on the middle, to an empty silly theater on the top of the old Loew's with tops of canopies cut off by stage-bottoms halfway up. Wander streets and subway to a rather expensive La Louisiana, and home again drunk.