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1980 3 of 10

FRIDAY, 4/25/80: AMY ON MY TRIP 3/80:
A: Doing preparation work.
B: You had such an expression on your face, I thought maybe someone else was coming through this time.
A: Yes, well, you are quite right, my friend. There is another being present who has desired to communicate with you. The guardian of (phone rings)---oh, such activity today; really, much activity as you know, energy has shifted forward. Now---it's the guardian of Indian sacred places, hardly ruins, he says.
B: Hardly ruins. You DO mean AMERICAN Indians?
A: There is in consciousness little separation; it is unified---oh, yes, it is a unified line of development, south to north, branching like tree. He says you must come with a certain quality of spirit. This is why you have been pushed and pulled like---by your sweater. You must come, receptive like the moon; and he says, "Open your mind." Through the skull, like creating a basin: the symbol of the crescent moon is the actual quality you are seeking to capture and translate. Can you follow me there?
B: Yes.
A: So, in consciousness, we create a depression in the brain, so that it is empty to receive. And we strike a hot flame into the third eye so that---vision shall be---visible. Your third eye has been blank for a long time now. Karmic reasons as well as a conditioning in this life. It is as though the movie has been out of business.
B: I'm afraid my resistance might have something to do with this, too.
A: Well, I would not overburden yourself; there is much Karma here. But we and---that is I---and this marvelous Indian sacred guardian should like to give you some glimpses of truer nature. He extends to you the peace pipe and welcomes you with a cloud of smoke. So. (Blows) It is, to my mind, certainly possible for you to enter his domain.
B: Will I actually be traveling to his domain---in this time-space?
A: Well, I would say yes. Gently, like a woman making a doily, I want you to make your trip: nice circular, tight but beautiful, motions, so that you do carry the torch which is now your brain and your thoughts to receive in this physical form all that you can. I certainly say it is possible; do it gently, but firmly---in a circular manner, wrapping into yourself all that is needed. He says, "Yes, you can come."
B: Are there specific places that might be more interesting to direct myself toward?
A: One shrine is in a small hut---in a settled, populated area: it is now still populated -- do go here. Do you know the one? I don't see the name, but---
B: There are many in the mountains.
A: Two, it was as you showed the map, the one pint to the right and up a little.
B: Towards the right---Quirigua? Or Copan? Would it---
A: Yes, let me see---it is---
B: Is it possible to show you the map? Can you point?
A: Well, in that corner. Yes, it is in that corner. That lower corner on the right. Those are a very good start-points. (Pause)
B: On this trip there's always the choice between flying and going overland. And I've been told---I've never been there---that overland is very difficult---
A: You can get to those easily, and I would suggest that---similar to your idea---to also move to the top part. This strongest shrine---the third-eye shrine. You know, the big, lovely one.
B: Tikal?
A: Yes. A village shrine.
B: Village?
A: It is like a village.
B: Yes, yes. Why did you call it the third-eye shrine?
A: Well, it is---meant to attract wisdom.
B: My fantasy is to go around that area, too. Am I trying to do too much? Am I being---?
A: You can---that is a nice idea. You know there are rings of power, and as you are interested in SENSATION, DO take some excursions, and see how far you can feel emanations. It is an interesting idea.
B: See how far you can---?
A: Feel emanations. And I would fly out of that place.
B: Out.
A: Yes.
B: But drive in?
A: RIDE in, yes.
B: OK. I'm sorry, I hope you don't mind being a travel agent.
A: Well, my friend, I'm not the MOST gifted at these matters. You know what stands out is the POWER, not the highways.
B: Yes, exactly, that's what I'm hoping to get---
A: But you can change---I won't mind if you fly in from---uh, the cities on the bottom.
B: Guatemala?
A: No, the little ones we're starting you with.
B: Oh, the little ones.
A: You can fly from those to the big ones.
B: Oh, that would be fabulous, yes.
A: That would be good. You could drive in, too. Always have a piece of your, what you call magnetic, open, so that you can register. This trip is certainly going to teach you about the use of the receptive quality. Now, you have always been strong at using the more powerful yang qualities, and have left them run the show. This trip is a blessing in that you shall learn to travel with your receptive open. You may get tired, you know; the receptive fills rapidly, and unless you process information, and be through with this cul-de-sac, you shall experience fatigue, but we encourage this. Too much imbalance; we want to seek to balance you slowly---in all your life-experiences, travel as well as anything else. Now I want to talk a moment to you---I see you have not forcefully been meditating.
B: That's true.
A: You look less---you have shrunken a bit.
B: Oh (mock anguish).
A: Yes, and want to fill you back out to your normal barrier.
B: OK.
A: So make sure you spend some time filling and fluffing yourself.
B: OK. Fill and fluff.
A: I use those words; I mean you know, you send your waves---
B: I know---I have a distinct feeling what those words mean.
A: Oh, good. You can follow my image---yes, you see, you live here normally, and you've shrunken in and this barrier is still here, but it's as though it's compacted in.
B: And I remember when the class was reading my aura, it was remarked that it had---
A: Wide, yes.
B: Fiery, fire-y edges which I get an idea of fluffing up and blazing up and expanding a bit more.
A: Well, also now I have a sense of waves---to fill with waves, in addition to that fire. Thought waves.
B: Do you have any sense of---who I'm traveling with, or am I traveling alone?
A: I was just to speak of this. There is a difference between you and your proposed companion---large differences. And (pause) viewpoints and purposes differ. To my mind, you are clearly the superior organizer and sensitive. In the philosophical sense, you follow. You stand above your friend, who has, in some ways, fallen short of his mark. I hope you don't take this to be criticism. I only have a sense of one who has not reached for this---greatest that he can be---there is a quality of dissipation here. He has gone this way (motions OUTWARD, broadly) rather than this way (motions UP AND DOWN). Now YOU have committed yourself to go two ways at once (We laugh).
B: Oh, I know, I know. (laughs) Sometimes three ways.
A: Well, I see two. I take your word for the third, though I at the moment do not envisage it. So, if you travel with him, I think you will have a few problems with his personality, but you can handle it. He has a cranky quality, or some such thing emotionally a bit trying for you. But, if you can control your "up" so that you don't put your "out" there and sink down, you shall be all right. But, in essence, you might be better traveling alone. Companionship is nice; conversation is always a joy for you, but I would not cry if I saw you go alone.
B: OK.
A: Unusual trip, it is meant to be.
B: Could I ask an additional question about the health of this person. Do you have anything---he's recently been concerned about his health.
A: Yes, I can see his aura is filled with a gray part. I ask myself, "Has he ingested too much alcohol and drugs." His liver is overloaded, and he is through the middle weak. Not in good health.
B: Which sometimes makes him difficult to travel with.
A: Yes. Perhaps he even has low-grade infection. Mild hepatitis is even possible here: sub-clinical, perhaps, but I would not rule this out. He is not well through the center, through the middle.
B: I just want to clarify; this IS Andre we're talking about?
A: Yes.
B: Yes, because when you said hepatitis I suddenly thought of Dennis, and wanted to make sure that we were talking of Andre.
A: That is your OTHER friend.
B: Yes.
A: He had a life, by the way, in the circus---your friend Dennis.
B: He'd like that.
A: He was bold; he was acrobatic. That is why he loves the stage so much now.
B: May I tell him?
A: Ooh, of course. A gift. He is in a nice frame of mind: budding, opening with spring; I am most happy. I salute him in crawling through a dark winter---not a happy time, like a tunnel; but spring brings fresh blooms to him, and he has much happiness to look forward to this spring and summer.
B: Sometimes he tends to blame me a little bit for his unhappiness---
A: Ooh, not fair!
B: I didn't think that was fair.
A: Only one person can crawl through a tunnel at a time.
B: (Laughs) Beautiful! Beautiful. Beautiful.
A: I hope that image will help him.
B: Yes, yes, I love it.
A: He's so tender that one must be careful with him, my friend. He wounds easily and takes criticism very personally and deeply. You must always frame your information so that it supports and adds to his height, rather than critical. That is an ability to be cultivated. All that is said ADDS; nothing takes away or detracts.
B: I can---
A: He's uncovering creative channels, and we encourage it. Did you want to add something, I'm sorry.
B: No, I'm delighted to hear what you said, the only thing I wanted to add was that I probably need more practice in this supportive criticism, creative criticism, rather than taking-away criticism.
A: Well, here's one idea: take away word criticism. Supportive information.
B: Yes.
A: Banish the word and its qualities from your inventory.
B: Sometimes I do, and sometimes it doesn't work.
A: Well, with him it is important, at least. In other cases you can afford to be less---ah---
B: Sensitive.
A: Yes. Practiced! But with this young friend you MUST watch carefully. Take the time, it is important. You will learn---it will be your stage for learning, this case. Let it flood elsewhere, but make that the one place it is practiced well, Not so hard.
B: No, I find, though, when I get rushed, I get irritable, and sometimes things come out that---
A: Yes, in that case, exactly what I am saying, is that you must not rush. When you are about to say something, slow yourself down, and visualize where you are landing with information. This is the thing I do---I must land my information. It takes great time to cultivate the ability to transfer information in a certain way. But visualize, as you give information, it comes under the feet like a block. One block under another, one block under the other so that you raise in height.
B: Excellent, excellent.
A: You will have to go slow because you are visually seeing in your mind's eye your actions, you are choosing your words, and you are watching his face. Much work!
B. Yes, but the first thing that comes to my mind is that this isn't spontaneous---
A: No, it is not; it is thought-through phrases.
B: Hummm---that's Dennis's sound: Hummm.
A: Does my communication look spontaneous.
B: Um, yes and no.
A: That's true. WHEN all the foundation has been set, then there is room for spontaneous communication. But I always take time to create the structure anew. That is a very big, before I allow spontaneous communication.
B: This would be so marvelous: I had to tell Andre that this session would be better with the two of us, and not with him. If I could have thought of these things as a foundation to allow spontaneity. It would have been so much simpler.
A: Well, you can call back a second time. No, your friend must be spoken with privately. There are factors in operation that must be planted, and they do not concern you. He has much grayness of mind and must be dealt with. Intimate material.
B: In---?
A: Intimate material, which will not support the presence of another.
B: Oh, I see.
A: You can tell him it is my decision, not yours.
B: Yes, I think he would like to see you, in fact.
A: Yes, I would be most happy, and in fact desire to see him. He's in need. He is at a point with himself: he does not trust his nature any longer, and he is unsure. Much bravado on the surface; deep unsureness in the heart. So I would be happy happy happy to help him.
B: I think he would be happy to hear that.
A: Oh, I am pleased.
B: Now, speaking of another person who is sometimes not happy to hear of you: that's Alice. May I bring her into the conversation?
A: Let us find if she---(pause) Yes.
B: Sometimes I feel that it would be best not to speak of you, or of Amy, to her. Yet to me---
A: No, she must know.
B: This seems hiding, but when I tell her, she seems so---well, the word Amy uses was authoritative. She seems so closed, and---so you suggest I continue to be open with her, and make my own decision. She says this, but she doesn't want to believe it somehow.
A: No, she's---disconcerted by the fact that her pupils receive information from a different source. Though she would find little gap between the channel that your teaching expands and the channel that I enter through. She is---unhappy with the fact that there is a second speaking-pipe that so many trust. She is uncertain and cannot locate it. She herself is not psychically aware.
B: Would it do any good for her to speak to you face-to-face? Or do I intrude?
A: I don't think it is likely to happen. And that is well; it is as though there would be too many parents, as she thinks of her pupils, in a way, as her children.
B: But you do suggest to continue to be honest, and say that---
A: I suggest selectivity. Let me think one moment, it is complicated issue. The one who understand it and loves and appreciates is actual teacher: the man Russell. He understand totally. He has the hook in the wall and the picture hangs well. He knows these gifts. She does not, and is mistrustful of them, fears a distortion. Let this lie then, please.
B: In fact, she's not going to be around very much longer, so---
A: That is correct. Oh, I would say---trust your judgment always. Never create a schism; if ever there is gap in my information and the school's, then blend them: never set them apart.
B: I've never found any contradictions.
A: I would hope there are none. My efforts are always the same as theirs, and are both absolutely similar, one in the same, in fact; to bring all humans to highest levels of potential and---so that in doing so they return the goods and blessings they have received to others, in hopes that similar upward lift---and cleanse, clean, clean, clean!
B: Speaking of clean, you'll notice that I didn't bring any list of questions this time; I have very little lists left; do you mind if I switch back to the trip to ask if you see anything---should I be as receptive, in Haiti, and in Guadeloupe?
A: Ah, those are quite different vibrations.
B: Can you tell me something about---
A: Yes, I would be delighted to. Firstly, the geography is different. The landscape is quite different from what you shall be seeing. You shall see more open spaces in your Indian nation---Guatemala: Indian nation.
B: More open spaces there?
A: Yes. And Haiti---Haiti, poor Haiti has had many tears, and almost like a bubble has been over her. Over a beautiful land! BUT---the worst thing happened when the cultivation of sugar took place, and slavery was instituted. Slavery took a dark proportion there, and great misuse was made of humanity.
B: Is there anything to WORRY about in Haiti, to being there?
A: I would share in consciousness a gentle, soothing energy as you ride along. Do your best to heal the sores. The bubble has been popped to a large extent, lately. The country is finally humanizing itself, but many wounds remain. Beautiful land which has swung to a depth, but much to see and learn from great compassion.
B: So I can be receptive there, too,---
A: Yes, I would say so.
B: Without pulling in any of this darkness that may still be there.
A: Well, you shall register it, I am certain; but you need not carry it home as luggage.
B: OK.
A: Vitality is strong there; sexuality is very active; so there is much energy available for presents of mind. Don't go asleep at the wheel, that is important.
B: OK. Do you see anything in particular about Guadeloupe?
A: A lucky visit.
B: Yes? OK.
A: It reminds me of a horseshoe for luck. A lucky visit. The right time at the right place, as they say.
B: Now to switch back, when you answer one question I think of another question---
A: Yes.
B: Is there---Dennis has been saying that he wants to get away from indexing. I think a lot of this is the dark tunnel.
A: Yes; part of it.
B: Should I encourage him to find something else? My nature would be to let him remain in indexing, but I would fear that that might hold him back from trying something else; I don't know what. He might think he knows what, but in some ways he's very immature.
A: His ideas are not formed: this is the problem. And he does not urge himself forward.
B: On the book he does; on the book he does; he's very---it seems to me---that he's very eager for the book.
A: Yes, he is, and as I say as a creative endeavor it is very good that he is undertaking it. Yet the sense I have is that---well, let me see again; let me take a moment---(long pause) I feel I am not the one to tell him; I think he shall have to---I see him working with cards, playing cards, for some reason, and flashing, at the moment, on a realization---in other words HE must come to this realization himself, to know he is at the end of his line. I cannot give it to him or tell him; he must---he is, in essence, more distant from receiving information through another, he must receive it through his own brain and nervous system.
B: Yes. Do you think it could be the tarot?
A: Tarot, or even just PLAYING cards. I see numbered cards. I'm not sure why; it is very strong picture, and they say "This is it." So I shall leave him to his own devices.
B: Can I tell him that much?
A: Oh, certainly.
B: OK; I'll see what HE says.
A: He's hungry to bite on a different line.
B: Yes. When you said he was at the end of this line, I was wondering what line you meant.
A: To do indexing, as you said. He's nearing an end. His patience is through. He has not learned anything new of late, and this disturbs him. He's at a point where there does not appear to be anything new to learn in the future, either. He does not care about the medical material; he's bored by the people and their frenetic energy and finds it disturbs and ruffles his own self. Further, he's not learning the tools of the index projects, all that well, to his satisfaction. So he says, "What's the point?" Well, in essence, he shall notice that much was learned: organization, ability to meet deadlines, stay at home and make it possible: not jump out the window in search of other activities. It will serve him.
B: I think he'll enjoy hearing this tape.
A: Oh, I hope it will help him. Go again and stress "HE is in charge; HE shall make decisions."
B: Oh, HE knows that!
A: I only sit on the side. Some people totally allow interplay through---Dennis---Terens---if I may come in close, Terens, it is to you to carry the torch, and I shall help fan its fires. My love and support to you always; carry your projects as far as you can and farther; if a barrier appears, don't give up. Strengthen and BREATHE fire through yourself, the Warrior nature. I want you not to give in. So there I have said to you.
B: Well, thank you; I must say that it's noon---
A: Oh, yes, then we must let Amy carry HER life forward too. Well, I hate to leave you; it is always too short, my friend. This bubble of joy I feel in your presence is again present.
B: Aw, that pleased me. Thank you, SheLAH.
A>: Oh, I thank YOU to call me forward; it is always too short a time. I want to see what our friend says to---he says "Yes, come, don't let the smoke get in our eyes." That's the feet into the cells of your brain. I hope that MEANS something to you; it sounds cloudy to me.
B: It sounds interesting, I don't know.
A: I think he says "Don't let confusion take over."
B: Yes, yes, I think that's probably---
A: Let this certain intuition---ha-ha---not confusion---ha-ha---well, there was spontaneity. Perhaps they have given you deep lessons today: how to use yourself lovingly for others.
B: Thank you.
A: Again I embrace you and lift you---miles high, and gently, gently, gently I underline, I send you toward your voyage, as a strong, strengthened, and supple being of mind and light. Blessings ever onto you; I shall love to hear of your adventures. Thank this being when you voyage, my friend; he shall protect you.
B: OK, is there a name that I can think of? Or I'm to tied up in names, maybe.
A: Call him Ti-ti; it is not his real name, a nickname; he will know it is you calling. His real real name, again as you say, will tie you in names.
B: Well, I thank you both.
A: (Guttural) Heh-heh-heh-ha. That was him---ha-ha.
B: (Laughs, somewhat uncomfortably).

SATURDAY, 4/26/80: WSDG TAPE: Intro: The subject is masturbation, solitary and mutual, and Bob is going to present us later on in the program with his 91-page summary of his questionnaire results on masturbation. And I THINK, Bob, if I am not wrong, are you president of the New York Masturbation Club?
B: Whatever the name is yeah.
I: We'll take memberships after the meeting.
B: OK.
I: Have a good time. We're looking forward to it.
B: OK. Thank you. It's too bad that people under 13 can't be here, because probably people under 13, before they're indoctrinated that it's "not nice" to masturbate, are probably the most inveterate masturbators there are, so it's really ironic that you said what you said in your intro. I did it since I was about 5 or 6; nothing happened but I still thought it was fun. I enjoyed listening to other people's fantasies about it, and then when I met Dennis, HE had lots of nice fantasies about it, and it is something that Dennis said that started me thinking "Now what would some other people's fantasies be? What's out there that I haven't thought of yet?" so I started out by putting an ad in the Advocate. Some of you may have seen in fact, for all I know half of you may have responded to it, and I know you by code names and everything else. The ad just said this: "Sensual J/O students: share secrets with j/o addicts. Send $1 to JOYI." (Well, JOYI has may meanings, and one of the things it means is "Joy of Indexing," which is on my card, which if anyone wants, they can get for the club afterwards, but that's one of the things if means). The other thing is means is to use your own imagination: JOYI: what would YOU like it to mean. So a lot of people thought they were going to get dirty stories, or pictures, to---they thought I was going to do all the work. But some few nice people knew that THEY were supposed to do all the work, and some of them started by sending in photographs of their methods; drawings, poetry, and, as someone said, little, blotty sheets. (Laughs) That's how it all got started; and I'm Bob, and this is Dennis, and Dennis got off on what we got in, so now it's our turn for awhile.
D: Yeah. When it first started, I didn't know what Bob was up to, he was very mysterious about this whole thing. I knew he'd gotten a box at the post office, under the initials JOYI, and that he was doing something, but I couldn't tell WHAT. But when the letters started coming in, it kind of started getting fun. I'd come over for dinner or something and he'd say "Gee, I got three really great letters today," and I wanted to read them, but I couldn't figure out: shall I read them now or should I wait until after dinner to get stoned and THEN read them? Sometimes I'd do both. I know that when I was a kid growing up, that I was jerking off when I was about 12. I didn't know what all these other things were that you could do. I'd not yet gotten -- heard of or gotten to the point of SUCKING, or anything wild like that, but I knew that I jerked off and I would liked to have done that with other people, and so at the early age I was into that fantasy, and I still think it's very exciting sharing that. It's a very PERSONAL thing, I think, and I think that if people would share their fantasies MORE---Bob used to go into an office, and you'd go to an office and they'd say "Hi, how are you?" and talk about the weather and our work, and what I'm really thinking about is "Gaddammit, I wanted to fuck the guy on the subway; he was a humpy stud," and I know the fellow next to me is thinking something equally, and what are we talking about? The weather! The most boring thing you could imagine, and yet what we're really thinking about is very hot and exciting; why don't we share that instead? And the fantasies that came in, I thought were really super. And the form they came in---there was one fellow, I guess he was an executive; he gave enough information that you know he was an executive somewhere along Sixth Avenue in a large building, and he wrote out something like 15 pages on a legal pad, and it was really something. I think it was probably the first time a lot of these people had taken to share this intimately.
B: Had taken PEN in hand (laughter)---
D: A part of themselves. It was Bob's thing; and he organized it, and he was incredible at it, and because he is an indexer, which means that he does the indexes at the back of books, he's good at organizing. I could never have done it. Even if I had the fantasy when I was high, "Gee, wouldn't it be fun---" he was the one who carried it out.
I: Could I ask you to stand up, please, and talk a little louder, because we're getting such an audience that they can't hear on the side.
D: Standing room only, that's great. Anyway, that was really the part that I played in it. I was his friend, and I do it, and I love it, and I thought it was fun sharing it with people that I had not met. You were probably going to mention this, but there was one person from Chicago that sent in a xeroxed stream-of-consciousness sex-fantasy that ran for about six pages, just continual wild meetings of different sorts, and that was his contribution and it was like a minor novel. But that was the part that I play in it really; I was an observer, and I shared it with him, and I helped contribute some of the answers to the questionnaire, and I answered my own set, and there was a period of time between the time that I answered them and it was finally compiled, and I sort of forgot my answers, and I went back and later I thought "Gee, that guy sounds kind of neat, I get we'd get off together." Then when I started to REALLY read them, I realized it was my OWN answers. Anyway, that was the role that I played in it. So why don't I let you talk about it.
B: OK. So the first thing I sent out, if you can see, it was two very, very closely typed sheets, as you can see. It was about 110 questions, and a lot of the questions are multiple, like "Describe your cock fully; what is it like," No one answered that question; that was the question I really wanted to have answered: what's it LIKE, and that goes into details: length, soft, hard, and an orgasm; circumference soft, hard, and at orgasm; your body: height, weight, color, build; circumcised. Describe head, describe veins, describe balls, describe pubic hair, describe body hair, does your cock juice, how much; describe the biggest cock you ever saw, what was it like? That was the first question. (Large laugh.) So some people were really turned off by the questions: "We want action, what's all this words business, let's get down to it." So I put their names into another little file, saying maybe we could get down to it sometime. So a lot of people responded to these, anywhere from just scrawling answers on these two sheets and sending them back, to sending in, as Dennis said, as many as twenty or thirty pages, some of them typewritten, some of them handwritten. Then a lot of people asked OTHER questions, so I sent out a second sheet, a third sheet, which was the second part of the questionnaire, which was another 30 questions, which got into "What's the best j/o material, in books, movies, TV, magazines, or other." "Adding to list of partners: do you jerk off with infants." Someone had mentioned it, so I thought, "Gee, I forgot that." See somewhere, people out there have more imagination, more experience than I have. What about extraterrestrial, other-world J/O: "Close Encounters of a J/O kind." Adding to techniques; now this was a technique I hadn't thought of: "Can you come without touching while being fist-fucked?" Now that was one that I hadn't thought of before. So the audience that was part of the questionnaires gave a lot of feedback. "Can you shoot on demand in exactly 1 second, 10 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour? Would you attend J/O parties? Would you rather be the star, or in the chorus, or in the audience in a J/O session." For instance. That was the second set. So people sent in all kinds of answers; I sat down at my little typewriter and typed out, again single-spaced because I knew I was going to mail it out, 90 pages that looked like this: single-spaced column-to-column stuff. That's why I got Dennis up here: because I can get into the statistics, and Dennis can get into, you know, "This is what it was like." He mentioned the one that went on for five pages, so while people settle down, this is just---"Next car in drive-in theaters (through to) (lots of laughs) Olympics fantasy." I've read this much (showing) of one of the five pages. Not to mention, one of my favorites, but then I'm---queer (huge laugh)---which I've misplaced. If anyone comes up with any questions, just shoot them up---um (laughs). "Christmas J/OY" "On the night before Christmas---inside my jockstrap." So there's a lot of talent out there. (Laughs) So I sold these. I sent out price lists, the whole thing went for $10; they sent ten bucks, and if no one here works for a publishing company, right? No one here works for a publishing company. Great. I would take in indexes and go to the xerox room with THIS, and xerox it. There's one time this little old secretary comes in to xerox and she says "Is this your sheet, I found this in the xerox machine," (huge laugh) and I take it and it says "What's the biggest cock you ever saw?" so either she was extraordinarily cool, or she didn't read it. Then there was a lot of people in New York who said they wanted something more active. So I said OK; there was something on the West Coast named J/O Buddies, which was a very big organization, actually, in its prime it had about 300-400 members, most of them in California, as the guy who started it wanted it to be, but a lot of people from New York and elsewhere wrote to him and wanted to be included, and he sent out this mailing list of names and addresses and codes of what you liked, and whether you wanted phone calls, tapes, records, letters, or visits, and so I thought well, he does THAT part of it, I'll just get into the information part of it. Then he got into trouble and he decided to cut off the New York end of it, so I thought if anyone was interested, I could start something in New York, and it started out just a sort of a newsletter, just listing names and addresses and phone numbers, hoping to get some parties started. Well, one thing about New York is it's VERY paranoid. So a lot of people: "Well, I'm not gonna give my phone number until I get their phone number." A lot of people have post-office boxes, so things never really got started. I would like things to get started. There were a couple of orgy groups before---that's one of the things about masturbation: it's sort of like---some people consider it very low on the totem pole. Wherever your totem pole starts, you have to go through sucking and fucking before you get down to masturbation. So at orgies, if you're "reduced to masturbating," you know, "Gee, something must be wrong. What's the matter, is your throat sore, or you got hemorrhoids hurting you terrible, or what's wrong that you're not participating as widely as you can?" Some of the answers in here dispel that idea: that it's low imagination on the pole. Hasn't anyone got any questions yet, about anything: Yes?
Q: This is not really a question. About four years ago I subscribed to a journal called the J/O journal---
B: Yeah, I heard about that.
Q: Well, it was $10 for a year's subscription; I sent out my $10 to San Francisco, probably published by some gay printer, and I received one copy, a magnificent copy (I should have brought it but I forgot) and I still have it at home, I have it tucked away somewhere, and it has a magnificent fantastic rendition of cocks of all kinds and sizes, fantasy style, which is even better than the real thing sometimes, but that was the only issue I ever received, and I'm very disappointed, but I only got one issue. But apparently, for some reason or other, maybe they were forced out of business by the law, or something like that.
B: Well, it's a lot of work to do any of these things. It was a lot of work to do this. One of the surprising things I found was that after awhile I started getting bored, literally, with the things coming in the mail, and I was just as glad when things sort of petered out (Huge laugh).
Q: I wanted to answer the question. I think you brought up the J/O journal. It is a beautiful magazine. It came out about three years ago, or so.
Q: Did you get any other issues of it?
Q: No, there was only one issue, and there will never be any more. There was a very sad ending for the editor.
Q: What happened?
Q: Well, he committed suicide (whistle from audience), not because of this, so far as I know; but anyway, it WAS a beautiful magazine.
Q: You know, I never got a refund.
Q: No one ever did.
Q: Dead men don't give refunds (Laugh)
Q: Keep your issue, though.
Q: Well, I will. Thank you very much.
B: Would anyone have any suggestions how this sort of paranoia could be a little bit lessened? I don't know of any way of doing it except, as I suggested in some of the newsletters that I sent out, you know, to try it with one or two people, and if it works, fine; if it doesn't work, well, maybe it's not going to be so awful. Incidentally, I just saw someone picking up the sample that was sent around. One thing, the sample was excellent, it's representative unfortunately of only the short answers. It's the LONG answers that really get into it, and really---get into it.
Q: My impression is that there are lots of people who are little more advanced sexually than just jerking off---like people relating fellatio. Have you thought of a group that would be involved with THAT aspect of sex?
A: Well, there had been groups, I think there still are groups, that had been just general run-of-the-mill orgies. There was a group that I was a member of, a couple of years ago, called Tsi-Dun, and I've heard from other people that I've been talking to on the phone that there are other groups that meet now, and have regular orgies, where more or less anything goes. But there's a certain---maybe I'm thinking only for myself---voyeuristic, a heavily voyeuristic component in jerking off, and so it's nice to SEE; and if a cock is jammed up someone's ass you're not going to see much when he comes. That's as I say, that's only personal. Part of the charm of a session that's devoted strictly to j/o, is that you get to see what's going on. If that's your thing, that's your thing. There's a bar that started a weekly session---it's sort of in its infancy. People suck, people fuck, but the emphasis is j/o.
Q: Are any of those machines satisfactory that are advertised?
B: I never tried any. A lot of people who responded said they were. The one that was mentioned most, I don't have stock in any of them, was Accu-jack. It was mentioned in a favorable sense. No one wrote in and said "That's a crappy company, it doesn't do anything." It was mentioned in a very positive sense. They also mentioned the cream that comes along with it; they said the cream was fabulous. (Laugh) On strawberries. There were a couple of things I found that I wasn't expecting to find. Some of the fantasies that I'd harbored all my life and expected to see duplicated, weren't. Why doesn't anyone automatically think of being stuck with a particularly humpy elevator for seven hours? You know, you have to do SOMETHING to pass the time when the lights go out---or in a subway car. It seems to be very difficult to get people in touch with their fantasies with something that's traditionally thought of as being very personal. Whereas a lot of people get into it on a mutual basis, 2 or 3 or 4 people getting together, and verbally, and physically, and whatever way turns them on, sort of egging each other on. Which leads me to one of the other things that I found is that---part of the thing with people who really get into it, it's not so much HAVING the orgasms as finding lots of ways of DELAYING the orgasm. I thought they might teach me a couple of things; they didn't teach me very much. I thought there must be some new, marvelous ways out there---no questions, jeez.
D: I think it's interesting: we were at a party last night, and we were talking about this---one fellow there, his name was Dick (laughter) was telling me about when he was in the Army. He said that his buddy there had a lover in the states, and he would send him cupcakes, and he knew that his friend here in the states would jack off into each cupcake before sending it over there, and these guys in the regiment just said these cupcakes were fabulous. (Laughter) And they were the only ones that knew that the regiment was sharing his friend's---heat.
Q: I believe Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake." (Laugh) Everyone that Bob has talked to about his project seems to have some little contribution, now you mention it: "Hey, you know---"
B: Am I saying nothing controversial enough?
I: What was the purpose being all this?
B: Sheer curiosity and my personal titillation. And then, as it turned out, titillation for the people who got the responses, because some people said they got off reading the questionnaire. A guy said, "Gee, I jerked off three times reading the questionnaire." And then they would get dribs and drabs (weak laugh) of the responses, and they'd say this one was good, and that one was---it's whatever turns you on. There were things in here, there was a section on---to give you one of the sections that was not particularly liked---on blood and S&M and scat, like the question "Do you make your cock or someone else's bleed? How? How does it feel? Do you use piss or shit in J/O? How? Do you use S/M in j/o? How? Do deformities or catastrophes turn you on, how? Do you think about losing your potency? When? What do you think? Do you think about cutting it off, cutting someone else's off, mutilations?" Not too many people responded to that; they thought it was kind of a turn-off. Other parts they thought it was kind of a turn-on. Like the section on Kicks: "What really get you going? What turns you on the most? Cock, balls, nipples, assholes, mouths, what else?" I was expecting something else---I didn't get much else. Do you j/o for money? In front of a paying audience? How much do you get? No confessions. Do you use mirrors? What hardware do you use? Cockrings, rubber bands, leather straps, scissors, matches, candles, fruit, other things? Do you ever eat or drink anything to make your cum taste different? No, they said, but WHAT? (Laugh) (Pause) (I'm getting desperate). I can keep on reading. Do you shoot in your own mouth? Do you like the taste of your own cum? Others' cum?
I: What's the answer?
B: Yes and no! (Laugh) That was the nice thing---you got the whole gamut. Even on some of the rougher stuff, you got some people who said Yeah, I really like that. And they went into details.
I: I was wondering how many people in here read the book "Portnoy's Complaint"? The little boy was always jerking off in there. He was borrowing his mother's liver from the refrigerator and using that.
B: That was a classic. That was the first thing I read that made ME think there was really a place for something like that. That was the first extended masturbation reading I had ever done. And one of the things I found that's too bad is that there aren't really many books out there about jerking off. There's a book by Masters called "Self-Stimulation," that was remaindered at Marlboro's for a buck, so you can tell how popular that was; I tried to get a book published out of this, and no one wanted it. They said "Well, its audience would be rather limited." I said, "I don't know, you get pretty big crowds if you announce it in the paper."
Q: What is the most favored position in j/o? Standing up, sitting down, lying down?
B: A friend of mine, hanging from the ceiling, in fact, loved to---he had a chinning bar; he'd love to get himself right to the point of coming and then chin, and then lift his legs up as he came. He said that was a remarkable feeling; it's just too bad that I wasn't into it early enough to have been able to see it. He sort of did it by himself and I sort of did it myself. That was a couple of years ago.
Q: A number of peepshows in and around New York City have movies showing someone jacking off, and I find that to be just as exciting as a group of people jerking off, plus the model is generally very handsome and extremely sexy-looking, and I become very excited just to watch someone jerking off like that, you know, he'll stimulate himself in so many different ways, sticking things in his ass, and all that sort of thing.
B: Well, it's interesting: A friend of mine likes people; he doesn't like apparatus. You know, he doesn't like to see this rod going into this aperture, and in sex films, with fucking and sucking, what you get are these sort of apparatus shows, but when you get a real j/o film, you usually have a bit that deals on the sensuality of the body: it goes over the whole body; it goes front, it goes back, it goes head shots, it goes cock shots; it gets into the feeling of the person getting into himself.
Q: VERY sensual.
B: Much more, I think, maybe I just watch the wrong fuck films, than in fuck films.
Q: There's something very sensual about the fact that a person's all by himself and enjoying his own body.
B: Not to get technical about it: Masters and Johnson have PROVED that, as they can measure intensity of orgasm, the strongest, the most-felt orgasms are the one that come from one's own manipulations, because one knows one's own body the best. Now I'm sure---this is not to say that one doesn't have great sessions with someone else. Dennis and I have had great sessions together, with other people---all kinds---
D: Animals, doorknobs! (Laugh)
B: Animals? You did it with Rhoda! (Laugh) Rhoda's his half-dog; he has a half a---never mind. Next question.
Q: How come they always refer to it as kid stuff?
B: I don't know; it's too bad.
Q: I think it is too.
B: Kids do it more often because they can't find anyone else. But kids in a certain sense have a much more fruitful imagination than adults do, because kids don't know yet what they can't do.
D: I think also that it's the first thing you really discover about sex, and consequently I think one of the most intense sexual experiences. It's like, "Son of a bitch, I can do THAT?" For me it was. One day I was playing in the dirt, and the next day I was playing with my cock, and that was an overwhelming experience. I think THAT makes it a very exciting thing, because it is an intensity to it that you can't quite compare with other things which sort of run along the way after that.
B: This is not to say that if you get two people that are very well attuned to each other, who know each other's turn-ons very, very well, that you can't get some extraordinary sessions with other means of expression. But in some of these responses where you get people who concentrate for five hours in almost coming, then drawing back, then almost coming and letting a few shots come out, and then drawing back, not going down, walking off into a corner, watching television, going off and doing what they're doing, coming back and some guys do it over a whole night. They start at night, wake up every couple of hours, and they keep playing with it, and in the morning when they shoot, of course they hit the back of the bed; they build up to it. A lot of times, with two or three or four people, you don't have that amount of control. You don't have that much patience, maybe. With yourself, if you got nothing else to do, spend eight hours at it. If you got two people, sometimes you want to do something else. Go to the refrigerator.
D: Bob is not the only one who's onto this wavelength obviously It's sort of organizing a thing showing that it's not just something you do on Saturday night when you don't have a date. You know, it's something you can do by yourself because it's terrific! A friend of mine, who went out of town for awhile with a show, before he left gave me this gift of a tape, on which there are about 8 guys talking, as they jack off, in different ways, about what they do; and this thing of extending, doing it for a long time; one of the kind of cute parts in there, this guy says, "It's a rainy day," he's describing the weather and how he's jacking off, and he says, "It's ten after 11 now and I've been doing this since 9:30," (laugh) and it's just delicious, you can feel his joy there.
B: I'm looking for positions; I don't think I asked about positions. New question.
Q: Well, I know sometimes, when I have a partner, he generally enjoys coming, generally, standing up. Laying down, he can't do anything. Has to stand up. I guess it's his fantasy.
B: Some people like to be looked at, a lot of people mention mirrors. I don't like mirrors on ceilings, always make me nervous; mirrors along the wall you stand up to, and that can be very nice.
Q: A good way to perk up your sex life is to be into health foods. I know personally, I am, and I also, twice a day, take a teaspoon of brewers' yeast, mixed in fruit juice, and I don't eat junk foods. Try to stay on a good wholesome diet; I use, also use wheat germ, vitamin B-12 also, and it perks you up, fantastic---it gives you so much pep and energy. A friend of mine got me into brewers' yeast---
B: One thing I heard, though, is that if people don't eat meat, sometimes that lessens their interest. Do you know anything about that?
Q: I read something about that; your vegetarians, in India there are a lot of vegetarians, and there's one way they control their sexual desires, by eating vegetables. Also, down south there's a colony of vegetarians in _____ City, and they subsist entirely on vegetables, maybe a little milk, but they eat no meat at all, avoid meat completely, and their interest in sexual activity is lessened, as a result.
B: Actually, I should have asked that question: if there were any vegetarians, because the ad was for someone who was really into sex first and j/o second, or vice versa, and it would have been interesting to find if there were any vegetarians; this may be just prejudice, but I suspect not, because I suspect a lot of these people who say they come---on your excerpt you get---they come anywhere from 21 to 55 times a week, they're probably not eating rice.
D: I think a lesson can be learned from that: to eat lots of big pieces of meat!
B: Right! (Laughter)
Q: I wanted to know if any of your questions dealt with either control of breathing or use of breathing in terms of going toward or going away from an orgasm, while ejaculating (?) and also, I'd like to know if you asked any questions about movement, even, you know, gestures; did you find any sort of motions right before ejaculating, or going up toward it, or are there any feelings that one expresses DURING orgasm that they change or if anybody reports certain feelings.
B: There was no specific question about the breathing; some people did say that they held their breath just before they come, but it's interesting, there's a book out called "Total Orgasm" which is by a guy named Jack Rosenburg, and he says that one of the things you should NOT do is hold your breath. He said you should get into the rhythm of breathing that will heighten the sensations throughout the entire body. A couple of people mentioned that, the idea of extending the sensation from the cock to the entire body, so that it feels like your whole body comes when you come. And that it would seem the more you could get your body motion and rhythm into that, the more that would heighten that. Some of the people, of course, who said that they wanted to stop, and not have an orgasm right away, said that they would STOP moving.
Q: Did you ever ask any questions about what they thought the FUNCTION of the orgasm was? As far as---at least the INTENTION, for one thing.
B: In the second set of the questionnaire I got into some things that I had in the back of MY mind, but there wasn't really much response to it. The French call the orgasm "the little death," for instance. One of the questions was, I think I DID ask was "How would you like to die---if you KNEW you were going to die -- by bumping your head against the wall -- if you KNEW you were going to die while jerking off, would you continue to jerk off." Anyone who bothered to answer the question said "Yes." A lot of people just didn't bother to answer it. I don't know if that meant they thought it was a silly question, if I should assume their answer was "No," or what, but anyone who bothered to answer usually said something like "I couldn't think of a better way to go."
Q: Did you ask any questions about---as far as just what predates the thought of j/o-ing, that is the thought of masturbation, what precludes that? Did you ask any questions about what precludes that? (I'm confused, doesn't he mean preceeds?)
B: No. I should have had you on my advisory board when I was thinking up the questions.
Q: Not only the circumstances, but what does on in the mind, what brings on the idea: it is something you DO, is it a natural thing, is it in terms of energy; are you feeling any kind of energy or any kind of anxiety or any kind of particular FEELING that you'd like to be allayed?
B: Well, there's one question---it's here in the excerpts: "How would you entice a humpy stud into a j/o session with you?" and one of the most common answers was, just doing it, just showing that you yourself were excited. And I found that that worked for me in a couple situations that I thought were going to be even dangerous situations; I was sure this was a guy who was going to rob me. And the only thing that I did was to get into myself, and he got into himself, and we got into each other, and he left with such a kind of---embarrassment isn't the right word, confusion isn't the right word, unsureness isn't the right word, the combination of that---it wasn't what he expected at all---that's not the right word either. Unalloyed pleasure is not the right word either, unfortunately. Which reminds me that I went to that exhibit of Tom's drawings, Tom of Finland's drawings at---whatever gallery it's at---and one of the things that was mentioned, I guess it was in Soho, an article about his drawings, was that "everyone there was enjoying it." Everyone that Tom draws is enjoying it in the same simple naïve way that a KID would enjoy it. And I think that's one of the charms of his drawings, and it is one of the charms of jerking off that a lot of people have a lot of guilt laid on top of. See, I was born a Catholic, so all through years 8, 9, 10, and 11, it was always, "Uh, bless me father, for I have sinned, you know. I masturbated." So there was all that on top of it. But maybe that added to it; I don't know. I didn't find any correlation between religious upbringing, which again a lot of people didn't answer; religious upbringing and intensity or variation or anything like that.
Q: I know somebody who told the priest in the confessional that he was going it, and the priest said, "Wait, I'm coming over to your side." (Laughter)
B: There should be more of that.
Q: Two questions: one, how many people actually responded, and two, did they indicate the effects of drugs?
B: Yeah, about 150 people responded to the original questionnaire, but it obviously wasn't for a lot of them. About, between 30-40 people responded IN GREAT LENGTH. Some people responded to only one or two questions; I included them, but I really don't consider them as fully responding. Some people didn't bother to respond to the second one that was sent. What was your second question?
Q: Drugs.
B: Drugs, yeah; a lot of them---that was one of the questions, and a lot of them: grass, poppers; they didn't invent much. There were lots of lubricants, a couple of the machines, as someone else asked. No one said anything about an adverse effect by drugs. I've heard people say, no, as a matter of fact Dennis encountered someone who said "Gee, I'd probably be more active, but I just took some Speed," so that probably doesn't work. Some people I've heard say that grass is no good for them; if they want to have sex, they'll make sure not to smoke. Other people will say exactly the opposite. So one of the things that I've found about grass, a lot of it is more in the head than anywhere else. So if you've got yourself turned onto the idea that if you're gonna smoke, you're going to be hotter than ever, you probably will be. If you have it in your head that you're going to smoke and you're not going to be able to do anything, you probably won't be.
Q: The j/o scene is my scene; during the course of the years I've run ads and I've heard from scores of guys in Europe and the United States and everywhere else, and much of what you say rings very true to me, which is very much the kind of thing that I heard myself.
B: Did you respond to this?
Q: No, I didn't even know about it.
B: You didn't read the Advocate!
Q: No, I used to run my own ads, I didn't answer any of the others. There were two things that I learnt, and since you've heard from many more guys, one of the things I found out about it, I'm sorry to say, even though they liked this kind of a scene, it really wasn't first on their list. It was the kind of thing they wanted to do with me, for example, but they would prefer the Mineshaft, for example, if they got the opportunity, they'd get fist-fucked or their cock sucked or whatever they wanted to do, you know. They seemed to want to respond to my act, they could deal with somebody out of the blue and get into it, but it was very hard to come up with somebody who loved it (?).
B: Yeah, let me add something in here: one of the questions was "How do you compare j/o with other ways of acting?" Now the ad was directed to j/o addicts, so that sort of slanted it. Even the people who responded to the ad, though, some of them did say that they preferred fucking, sucking, whatever. Most because they responded to the ad said that j/o---and most whose fantasies were j/o with someone else.
Q: Well, most of the guys that I had access to wanted to be with somebody else, they wanted to see and get into a j/o scene, but if they could get into something MORE than that, it's what THEY wanted to do, which was not what I wanted, I just wanted the j/o scene to discuss going into. The OTHER thing that I saw was that many of the guys couldn't get off very well in a GROUP scene. And one of the things that I wanted very much to arrange if I could, WHEN I could, was maybe 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 guys, and I notice guys that I could really get off with, one on one, seemed really not to be able to get into a three on three scene, for instance.
B: I wonder what really operates here. Sometimes it seems like, when people are confronted with their fantasies, with what they have said their fantasies to be, they freeze up---I don't know---heaven knows what a psychiatrist would say: you know, are people afraid of success, are people afraid of failure, are people afraid of baring themselves so deeply that people will know them so well that they'll hate them, or love them, or despise them? But I've noticed that, not so much in here but through my own experience, and listening to other people say things, that there seems to be something a little threatening, maybe, in some way, about having everything right there. OR maybe what it is: it might be part of the things that some people say that what turns people on is the DANGER element, so maybe if everything's right there, there's no danger elements; and if that's what turns you on, there's no turn-on. Anyone else, on that line of thought?
Q: Anything in your questionnaire about the FEELINGS felt, after masturbating a lot?
B: That was the hardest to get into. There were questions all the way through: What does it FEEL like? What do YOU feel like? What do you WANT to feel like? What do you want the OTHER person to feel like? What do you think the other person wants YOU to feel like? And that was the area of least answer. I don't think it was that they didn't try, because a lot of people really put a lot of effort into these responses.
Q: I didn't mean while doing it---I meant after the climax.
B: Oh, after, I'm sorry. I don't think that was a question. There wasn't too much---now I have to decide whether I'm reporting on what I found from here or what I feel myself---but it didn't seem to be there was that much post-coital tristesse that would make people feel depressed, or sad. A lot of---in fact, no, a lot of people, when they did it, wanted to do it again, because they still had, you know, energies left over. And a lot of people, when they had the time to spend, would do it more than once, so THAT was a class of post j/o feelings: in other words, they wanted to do it again. But that wasn't a specific question. (Pause) I can resort to reading some more of this if---Yes.
Q: You mentioned that art gallery, is that still showing Tom of Finland?
B: Yeah, it's through Saturday. It's the Robert Samuels on, is it 795 Broadway? It's at Broadway near 11th St. It's up on the second floor, between Tenth and Eleventh. What Samuels? ROBERT Samuels, second floor. West side.
Q: Above the Strand, same area.
Q: Opposite the church.
B: Also, in that Soho Weekly News article they mentioned three other exclusively male-oriented galleries which I hadn't heard of, so it was interesting to see that article.
Q: Are you capable of giving out copies of your research?
B: Yeah, I had it at the beginning, but it just got to be too much trouble to duplicate it. There are some copies floating around, so you might be able to get one: of three sheets of excerpts from them. The thing I was trying to do was to publish it, and I couldn't find a publisher, and I'm still trying---in fact, if anyone knows anyone who would like to publish it, by all means get in touch with me. But it got---I really ended up sort of paranoid, after I xeroxed about a thousand sheets of this at various publishing companies, I thought "One of these days they're going to find out and I'm just gonna be---not be given any more business." And that's my living, so I just couldn't afford that. The thrill kind of wore off after I sent out the first 20 copies. So, sadly, the answer is---except for these three pages---the answer is no.
Q: How much did this project cost you?
B: In time, an enormous amount.
Q: In money?
B: Not that much: I had to rent the box, I had to take the ad in the Advocate, postage was extraordinary: each copy that I sent out was about two bucks, for postage (whistle).
Q: Did you cover that with the dollar charge?
B: Oh, no; I didn't make that clear enough: I charged a dollar for the questionnaire, and then when I got the responses, I sent everyone a price list and the price for the entire questionnaire was $10; it was 90 pages, it was like this (I hold up a thick sheaf). So I sent this out first class; depending on where it went, for the East Coast was about $1.88, for the West Coast was about $2.50, something like that. And so that took a big chunk of the $10, and the xeroxing was free.
Q: How many people wanted the full report: how many requests did you get?
B: Gee, I had---I was kind of proud of the responses: I got someone from every state except 4---one wasn't North Dakota (to Dennis).
D: I KNOW there are people out there jacking off in North Dakota.
B: Dennis is from North Dakota. None from Rhode Island, but Rhode Island is so teeny, and a lot of people from Canada: I guess the Advocate gets a big circulation up in Canada, and a couple people from England, various stray people from Puerto Rico, Hawaii, places like that. I think complete, I sent out 20; incomplete, you know, people who just asked for sections, I had it divided into 20 sections, they'd ask for whatever sections they wanted---incomplete there were about 50 or 60. Most people asked for SOME, you know, they had some particular thing they were interested in. And so a lot of them just asked for pieces of it, for about $2.
Q: This is sort of a side issue, but you mentioned the Advocate. I read it faithfully and see so many of the ads, I wonder how many of them are actually true and how many are made up. I would be curious to know, you know, how many people responded---if indeed all those ads are legitimate.
B: There were obviously a couple people who'd obviously gotten stung, because when I got some of the first answers, it took me a while to get everything ready for the first mailing, so I just kept their answers. And there were a couple of people out of the maybe 40 who responded right away, and some had responded as much as six weeks before---I was just late in getting out the response---and I got TWO people who sent me back a letter saying "Look, if you don't send me what I requested, I'll send your name to the Advocate and saying you're cheating in an ad." There was another guy who'd given his copy to someone else and phoned me and said he'd like another copy. I said "I have one copy left, just send me $10 and I'll send it to you." I never got it.
Q: Did you get any STRAIGHT people who responded, that you know of?
B: Some of the guys were married; some of the guys talked about having j/o scenes with their kids, with their sons---not many, you know, one or two.
Q: That's a creative idea (laughter).
Q: You didn't find out if straight men jerk off as much as gay men? Something like that.
B: No. See, I figured from the Advocate I had a very limited audience, a very narrow audience. I'm not gonna get too many straight guys who read the Advocate who are gonna respond to the ad. I'm not even gonna get too many guys who are reading the Advocate in GENERAL to respond to the ad.
Q: Did you specifically limit yourself to advertising in the Advocate?
B: Yeah, it was cheap. I wanted to see what kind of response I got. I ran it for ten issues, and one thing that's kind of a pain---after a while---the post office box I wanted to let go of, but the responses kept coming in, too---people must keep old copies and send off things when they have the time---it was as much as a year and a half after, that I still got responses to it.
Q: Did you do this recently?
B: I guess I took out the box in 1977, and so I did it most heavily in 1978, and it dwindled out in 1979---I'm not going to use "petered out" again.
Q: Did you ask questions about whether people liked to do it more in public or in private---do you have any correlations with---really with the GAY scene---
B: Most of it was wishful---most of them wanted to do it more openly with a group of people, but most of them didn't have any ways of doing it. And of course it's particularly sad to get something from the Middle West someplace and they say "Gee, is there anyone else in my neighborhood who likes this." (Laughter)
Q: Earlier you mentioned the not coming to orgasm, putting off, starting over again---
B: No, not starting over again. No. Getting right up there to the edge and then, you know, just teetering around that edge for awhile, not starting over again.
Q: Oh, because I was going to say, about 20 years ago there was an international playboy, Rubirosa who was a straight-gay lover, who married Doris Duke, and it seems that his technique, he picked up, some money (?) on the technique: he'd almost come, and then start over again, and he was about 48, he ran into a tree in a car and he was killed, and I read twice, once in a good sex book and once in some junky magazine, that he committed suicide, because in doing that so much, he ruined his prostate (ouch from audience)---and then about five years ago---
B: I'm almost there, and I haven't---I can't report any---
Q: He was going this in his 20's, you know, and it was really incredible, you know.
B: I'll let you know in 4 years.
Q: Rubirosa had one of the biggest pricks that ever existed, you know.
Q: That's true.
Q: About five years ago this neurologist told me that---now at my age---when you're gonna come, go right through and come; if you wanna do it over again, that's all right, but don't fool around for like half an hour or an hour and not come, because then that's not good for middle-aged men---that's what he said 5 years ago.
Q: That's a very controversial subject, and I don't think anyone knows the final answer.
B: Yeah, there are probably lots of things that go into the state of health of your prostate---
Q: But this was one of the leading ones of the city---
Q: Yeah, but I went to one of the leading ones and he told me just the opposite---
B: I think it's good to keep the tubes cleared, too.
Q: He said come as many times as you want to, but don't PROLONG it.
Q: You know, a lot of mystery is connected with sex.
B: But if people asked more questions, they might get more answers.
Q: Have any questions been asked about---like---cockrings, or something, that people can prolong the ejaculation with cockrings or other sex toys like that?
B: Yeah, there were questions that dealt with that. They said "Yes," but they didn't explain about it. They just said yes they use them or no they didn't use them.
Q: Is there any danger in cockrings that you know about? Or any responded like that?
B: I'm not a medical person, and there was no one who reported anything bad happening. I've seen some fairly extreme things being done by people who have obviously been doing fairly extreme things for awhile, and they still seem very healthy.
Q: In a book we reviewed for the Westsider, a doctor, something prostate; I see the name of the book, it was about exhibitionism. I wanted to say also about the survey---people who came late who wanted a copy of the 3-page survey who'd like to get it, let us know at the end and we'll make sure there are copies here for the next few weeks.
B: Thank you.
Q: When I was out in San Francisco this week, I met this guy who introduced me to a jack-off club, in the back of a bookstore there, and on busy nights they'd have a performer who would come out, and it was very popular, and I was wondering if anyone had tried that in New York; if it was possible or if it existed at all.
B: That was one of my fantasies about the club I formed, that people might get together and hire a performer. You know: people love to do it, and if you get someone beautiful to do it, they might charge, what? Thirty, forty, fifty dollars? For one person that's quite a bit, but if you get 20 people in a room, so what's $2.50?
D: It's ironic that you should mention that because I just got a letter from a friend today in San Francisco written on the back of this ad---it's in the back of the Adonis Bookstore there, and it's called Cinemattachine, and the live show that goes with it is a guy strips and jacks off, and apparently they can have people from the audience do it too, if they get the desire.
B: I've been disappointed in that any time I tried to go to a New York show, because I haven't seen one that goes all the way: they play around. If anyone else has anything to report, PLEASE report!
Q: Has anyone here seen the Richard Locke performance at the Ramrod Theater?
B: What happens?
Q: He climaxes with music, right onstage. He shoots off.
B: Live?
Q: Yes, live.
B: Who's this? Richard Locke at the Ramrod?
Q: Yes.
B: Great.
Q: I've seen, on Friday and Saturday, at one of those theaters, the climax of the show, so to speak, was a line of boys like the Rockettes, and some of them DID perform to climax. I believe that fell through later -- if anyone knows the name of anyplace---
B: Yeah, it seems that New York should have more things going than the West Coast, and yet somehow the West Coast is---maybe it's a little freer in some ways; I don't know, it seems to be a little bit ahead in some ways.
Q: Bob, we've run out of time, so before you stop, would you say something about your club? Some of the guys might like to find out how to join, etc, etc.
B: OK. The thing I said, since so many people said---look---they want to be put in touch with other people who were interested, I said "Look, I'm not exactly in the place where I'm ready to host parties, you know, for 30 people, anyone who wants to come, come (loud laughter), BUT, what I would be perfectly willing to do, and I've been doing it now, except that the membership is just not that big---I said "Send me $5, and you're on my list as long as I intend to do it, and I don't intend to stop tomorrow." So a couple of people did, and their names are on the list---what I've got here (holds up cards), if anyone wants---the only thing---uh---that I will say, is that I don't get off on the telephone. This is in the nature of an experiment because my phone number is on the card. I really don't get into it on the telephone. So I ask for your indulgence. But if you want to write to me, I'll put you on the list, and you'll get the list of the current members, and Good Luck! You know, there's really something there; I wish there were some way that the spark could be lit to get something started. But everyone out there is like me, I guess: they say "Well, I can't invite 30 people over to my place---I might phone one, but gee he sounds a little creepy on the phone, so I'm not going to invite him over---and I'll invite someone else, and gee, we really can't get together; he sounds a little kinky---or he doesn't sound kinky enough"---or whatever! I wish us all luck, I really do. So anyone who wants the card can get it. You can see one of the translations of JOYI on here.
I: Gentlemen, thank you very much. (Applause) (he continues with dinner door prize and birthday cake)---I say "You underestimate the strength of this subject; when he talks of "different audience tonight," and "a lot of new faces" and "We never expected the turnout tonight." Talk of WSDG news, Westsider, the Press, Wisdom's Child, Straight Press. WKTU, and then the recorder is shut off.

SUNDAY, 4/27/80: LE PLAISIR: While eating in Leo Lindy's on Saturday, the 12th, Dennis said he'd take me to dinner at Le Plaisir if I did a Cyclic Nucleotide index for him that was due the 15th. I needed the money anyway, so I agreed; he crowed that he knew just how to get me to say yes. So I said we should make it for lunch, and Dennis decided on Tuesday, the 22nd, and we went, stocking up on articles (2 from New York, 1 from Soho) on the way, and I debating (and not) telling him on the subway that he's had bad breath for a few days (or weeks) now. We were the first table-customers at 12:20, a beautiful day in which the pink soft walls perfectly complemented the large pink magnolia-lilies on the tables. Our waiter was slim-hipped and nice-crotched and smiling, so Dennis even left his card at the end, hoping for a response. Dennis ordered a kir, which at first I didn't want, but then decided to have one, though it was a bit over-dark and cassissed, but not bad for $2.25. The wine list produced expensive selections, but we decided on the Riesling "Stag's Leap" and the first taste was marvelous, but maybe only compared with the Kir, since in the glass it settled into an innocuous blandness. It was not the cheapest at $14, but it was nice to try. I'd heard of the pasta, so got a lump of stuff that sadly stuck together, but the cream and HIGHLY truffled sauce was delicious, fully worth the $3.50. Dennis got the daily vegetable mousse, which was broccoli, rather textureless but beautiful on a tan cream with perfect carrot-flowers floating around the sides, for $3. The daily specials reduced from trout and filet and veal to the quail stuffed with sweetbreads, paté, and truffles, two of them, but they left the legs, and though it didn't "jell" it was rich and nice, but nothing extraordinary for the $11.50 that it cost. I found nothing more exciting than the bass in pernod, but it was an inspired choice: perfectly textured and tasting of anise, it may just have been the most delicious fish I've ever eaten. Told Dennis we'd HAVE to come back here. The wine was intoxicating, the desserts imaginative: I had kiwi and cranberry sherbet in a holly-trefoil design, and he had twin balls of WHITE mousse of chocolate on a circlet of DARK mousse of chocolate, and it was a FABULOUS taste. Total of $52.50 with $4.20 tax and $8.30 tip came to $65, not the most expensive, but definitely WORTH it. I thank Dennis a number of times through the next few days, and it SET the stage of NOTEBOOK 282.

MONDAY, 4/28/80: METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART HIGH ON WINE: This follows NOTEBOOK 281, when Dennis decided to go home and I walked in a golden-wine haze up Madison, loving the people and the shops and the boutiques and the traffic and the warmth of the spring weather, to the Metropolitan, to pay my 5 and elevator up to the 19th Century galleries, which had so much SCRIPT on the cards that I merely wandered through in an alcoholic vapor, enjoying the colors and the (disappointingly little) sexuality of the sensual period (Puvis de Chavannes IS very anemic!), but not bothering to look at more than a dozen titles to see what it is, enjoying Moreau's "Oedipus and the Sphinx" again, and enjoying the sexy GUYS looking at the artwork, particularly the one who studied Ugolino and his sons SO appreciatively---those nice white limp marble cocks! I wander over to the Chinese Bronzes after walking sonambulistically through the Greek vases and marveling over how people pass through without seeing, though I marvel more about the great INTEREST in mainly an intellectual exercise of shape and function, rather than any intrinsic beauty of design or drawing, and begin enjoying the VOLUMES of the museum: the barrel-arches of the main foyer moving against each other as I promenade the side-upper aisle, the expanse of the Chinese room, the scholasticism of the Buli Sculptor with his 20 little wooden pieces "in which the woman looks as if she's BEARING weights on her head," and the rush and crush of people in the Chinese Bronzes, which I don't appreciate because I don't READ anything, so I don't realize that it's THE status/power symbol of the ancient Chinese. Also miss the fact that the 10-12 terracotta life-size men and horses from Qui's tomb are only part of OVER 7000 that were found! Pick up a pamphlet, gaze fondly at the blue-jeaned cutie with tousled curls for the last time, then walk through the music section, almost redone completely since I'd seen it last, music-less musicboxes---then downstairs to meander through the armor and medieval sections, and down to the glimpse again of the goldsmithing treasures before they close at 5, so I roam the bookshop and see dozens of sexy items on shelves and on two feet, and then out to wander through the park enjoying summery breezes and magnolia and cherry blossoms, though the cruising section is awful, and my feet are beginning to hurt as I roam out 72nd for the subway that takes me home at 6, pleasantly exhausted and STILL buzzingly high from the surfeit of wine at lunch! Then to J's 5 (NOTEBOOK 283)

SATURDAY, 4/29/80: Note from JO AT J'S #5: I couldn't have planned better to wean myself away from it for the next few weeks while I finish Kathryn's writing class. Pregnant glances while checking clothes, and they run out of tags so they have to write "241" on my thumb-web, and have a beer and get kneed by someone awful, notice the baldie is now wearing a becoming hat, and notice a tall fellow with a NICE chest and a CUTE shortie with a BEAUTIFUL body, so look forward to nice action. First get attracted to a SEXY kid rather looking like Tommy in the film, with his little-boy-innocent face, but he had NICE tits and a softish cock. Tried to get into him a number of ways, and he liked what I did with his nipples, so that finally when he watched the ass-sucking and hand job on the pool table, I crept up behind and worked on his tits until he left go his smallish but brick-red and VERY hard and wet cock, so I reached down and pumped him off, not getting my fingers enough out of the way, sadly, so that he could shoot onto the table, but it felt great, and then he moved off and I was saddened to see the cute little one going after the pudgy fellow who lives here in the Heights (I think), and they jerked off each other---I tried to get to HIS tits but he pushed me away, and I watched as BOTH of them came, the pudgy guy really sexily, so it was nice. Other thinner fellows were worked up constantly, but they wouldn't let me bring them off, and I tried to get into a couple of action scenes, but they wouldn't take off. Finally John got in front of a pillar-mirror and another fellow who was VERY hard for a LONG time got in front of the mirror aside him, and THEY went at it, and when John left go his cock, I took over, and he liked THAT, too, and we both whispered thoughts about coming into his ear and finally he shot in my hand, which was nice, and I refused to let go and he winced and struggled and I had a nice time there. The other long-laster ended up in the john urinating on a short nice-chested guy who was a bit over the hill, but then he left without coming and I didn't get turned onto the other guy, so finally I left, not having come, wishing I had, sad that the tall fellow came in a way I didn't see, wishing I'd brought myself off with the others in the circle-jerk in the corner, but thinking that maybe it needs more weeks between before it seems exciting again (or I meet someone like Jerry again). Blond kissy-type was there completely soft, but we didn't have an occasion to get into necking again.

WEDNESDAY, 4/30/80: WHITE TOWER CREW: After Le Plaisir and J's I was hungry, and didn't particularly want to ride home on the subway with John, so I stopped off at what used to be the White Tower. Six stools: to my left a cute guy with a bleached, heavy-eyed, pink-makeuped, plump person who spoke in PRECISELY the timbre of the cute guy, and with comments of "Do you ever let your skin breathe?" "I feel like I'm sitting next to Max Factor," and "I don't think of my friends as attractive or not---no, you're not a dog, you're just AVERAGE, that's about it," and "It'll help cover your beard," it didn't seem a secret that it was a GUY, too. Blacks to the right talked about mutual friends of the waitresses, and she took my order for a cheeseburger, found I didn't want onions, that I wanted pickles, and when she served it to me without pickles I simpered "You get me all hot for pickles and then you leave them out," and she fawningly humorously begs my pardon and gives me pickles. Everyone seems mildly friendly and genuinely HUMAN, which is nice, and when I put down my sole two bills and she charges me only $1.03 (I don't know WHAT'S on the billboard-menu for $1.40 as a cheeseburger then), I ask if she'll take a subway token, she says yes, and I pocket 35 and ask for peach pie with some dollops of milk---the guy says I must be from the south, the waitress says she'd like it with cheese, the "gal" says it'd be better with heavy cream, but I say, "Do you think I'll be able to get heavy cream HERE?" and she agrees that I probably did the best thing. The guy was SO friendly that maybe I could have gotten myself involved had I cared, and then the woman looked at the 62 and the subway token for the 75 pie and rang up 60 and said "That's OK, just don't do it when my boss's here," and I felt a rush of good-feeling to the whole place, felt acutely the differences between this place and Le Plaisir of just 12 hours ago, and felt that I had two very interesting experiences in both places. Floated back to the subway and rode home looking at people, and got upstairs to jerk off at last, just to "clear the tubes" and hoping that Dennis wasn't too angry about the unfinished conversation about why we're not so CLOSE anymore, though we HAVE been having sex rather more often recently: this morning being the nicest latest time.

THURSDAY, 5/1/80: Note from EFA MEETING ON UNIVERSITY PRESSES: Rutgers University Press---Joe Esposito---DID I send resume to him? They only do 15-20 books/year, about 20 people who keep the EASY ones and farm the HARD ones. They pay about $1.40/book page, about $1.10/MS page; $7/hr.
Teachers College Press (NOT Columbia University Press)---Mary L. Allison, wrote an author's guide that I wrote for, based on Chicago, puts out about 24 books/ year, and about 15 employees, and MLA styling favored for Literature ($7.50/hr.).
Cambridge University Press---Rhona Johnson (IS the name Susan McMahon said to contact at Harper and Row, but she doesn't remember Susan's name---80 books/yr in NYC---they send BILL, if they have to hire a freelance indexer, $7/hr, to the AUTHOR, who they say is RESPONSIBLE for it. Composition, printing and production costs are 50% HIGHER in Britain than in the US: So US companies should infiltrate FAST!
New York University Press---Despina Papazoglou---has it in the CONTRACT that authors do the index, and their freelancers have been the same for years---12 people.
American Association of University Presses has 76 members, $7/hr, only 15 of whom do ANY fiction or poetry publishing. All of them think of themselves as "publishing contributions to educational learning and research," nonprofit, yet not supported by their universities and NOT permitted to lose money! Heavy editing is usually needed.
UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS now handle all dissertations; they do not. They usually require indexes in 2 weeks, look for accuracy of indexing. They'd want a letter, resume, companies worked for, areas of experience.
LIBRARY sales in last 8 years of economic tightening have dropped from a typical level of 2500 to somewhere in the lower range of 1000-1500 now. They're reluctant to say that THEY are letting the standards of excellence fall.
Get address of Teachers College Press / 1234 Amsterdam Ave. / New York, N.Y. 10027
Allison's list of books to go to for indexing instruction are the 1) Indexing chapter in Chicago, 2) Book indexing by M.D. Anderson, and 3) Indexers and Indexing---she also recommends word-by-word indexing, 38 characters/line, and puts See also listings at the END of subs, following MLA, because they NEVER permit CN, sacAMP; cGMP, saCN; cGMP, saCN, only permit HIGHER to LOWER.

FRIDAY, 5/2/80: TALK TO BRUCE ON APPROPRIATENESS: Blab to him about Amy's pronouncement about Alice from a March session, and he's rather staggered "Oh, I didn't know that," and I admit that I just didn't TALK about it. Hang up at 10:50 and STRUCK that I didn't tell him NOT to blab it all over. Try phoning him until 11, his line busy, and put in to the operator to INTERRUPT the call when he hangs up; I phone him and tell him not to say anything about "Our talk about the Montgomery book, Amy, or Alice," just to confuse things and think it's centered around AMY. He's activated and asks "Why?" I take advantage of his pauses and ask if he'd ALREADY said anything and he says "No," I think truthfully. I tell him that the communication is between ME and HIM, and to make it a communication between ANYONE ELSE is not appropriate. I go so far as to say that in order to activate him about sexual matters (he brings up the topic) I may even LIE---but the only LIE I might have told him would be THAT, which would make the statement the TRUTH, and thus it wouldn't be a LIE anymore!!! I feel that I'm pushing and pulling at unknown levels: he's reluctant, eager to talk, yet says that he looked at ME talking about centers I'd just had and it didn't seem to BOTHER me, now it seem to be BOTHERING me. I say "YES," to simplify it, though THAT doesn't bother me, it's only blabbing about what AMY said about ALICE that bothers me (and that Amy was wrong about my 3-destination trip---and that I've BEEN to Amy for a reading!). He talks about Beegee changing her name to Catherine because of an Actualizations workshop, I say I have trouble adapting to new names, and he invites me with HIS folks and Beegee's mother to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens Sunday, not my idea of a pleasure, behind TV Shakespeare and Paul Taylor competing for that slot. He practically says he'd had some idealized going about my abilities to talk about ANYTHING, but then says he's working on this now in his Enlightened Communication Workshop at Actualism, that he appreciates this conversation, that he thinks things are going very well, so I can only hope that he doesn't blab and let it get back to Amy that I've been talking about OUR relationship and what's been said in OUR sessions.

SATURDAY, 5/3/80: Note from CATASTROPHES/PROPHETS/WORKING AROUND IT: If EVERYONE predicts catastrophe for the 80's and 90's, wouldn't be great to do a book or articles where I start CRUSADING to "lift what have NOW BECOME mass-mind images of disasters"---not as a PROPHET but as a WORKER. Then if nothing DOES happen---to the widely publicized chagrin of doom-mongers---would I then be hailed as an EFFECTIVE worker and as EFFECTIVELY a prophet? And if there IS a catastrophe, well, I would have tried and maybe made it LESS SEVERE.
Amazing how these last two pages flow (and dream 39) now that the "block" of the transcription of the two tapes has been removed! (and the next page, too!)

SUNDAY, 5/4/80: MANIC*****: Impressed with the New York article---could I be becoming manic? 40-45?
The "death by joy" (the term was "death by glee," but that sounds more manic) which was my idea---was THAT the death of a manic?
Another facet for Babbit Brighton to work through!
But there are COUNTERS to mania:
1) Dennis saying "I'm vulnerable---
a) Not liking to fly
b) Fearing dentists
c) Making mistakes of alphabetization
2) Bruce saying "Gee, Bob has no trouble talking of energies, but he's CONCERNED about appropriateness."---no, I'm LYING to HAVE him believe it, I just GOOFED and am COVERING, but WILLING to have him believe I've been troubled to get him to shut UP. OR deflect his THINKING onto ME, not Amy.
But as part of flight of ideas, in my session this morning I get: the assumption of the field as THROUGH AND WITHIN the body is the FIRST step toward "body not there" at SOME frequency!

MONDAY, 5/5/80: Note from MINESHAFT #3: Looking into the past, it seems that the first time was July 4, with Bill, from 12:30-4, which I wrote up on NOTEBOOK 80-81, and the only OTHER time I can find is Friday, September 21, when I went with Bill from 12:45-2:30, and rather disliked it, touched NO one because of the "heaviness" of the scene, and left earlier than I'd expected to leave. So Sunday, April 27, with Arnie, entering after "Song Night in the City" about 6:30, was only the third time. Couldn't find much action before he left about 8:30, but decided to stay around a bit longer since there were pretty people that I wanted to reach out for, and the first was the highly-muscled fellow I'd seen talking with a friend, who'd been kissed on the tits by a passing acquaintance and he'd seemed to like it, so I reached over and he responded with the reach and we started necking and kissing and his little cock got VERY hard and I pulled it out and started sucking on it, which he liked, and it was JUST a nice mouthful in length, though I would have preferred a bit more thickness. He later said that he'd often been ribbed about having a tiny cock. He said he didn't demand to come right away, so he sucked on me and I sucked on him and we necked and kissed and I felt his marvelous chest and arms and tits, and palpated his legs through his tight jeans, and he'd come down from 200 pounds and decided he didn't want hanging flab, so he started at the gym five years ago, twice a week, ran three times a week around his Lake Ronkonkoma house with his brother and sister, introduced me to his friend Artie, and he finally came in my mouth, to my delight, and when I was down, he said I should have come first, why was I so shy, I had to get more practice, I have a friend?, he can only play on weekends, he's going to remember my phone number (and did), and when I'd go out to the bar at intermissions he'd be there and we'd neck and he'd say before we couldn't talk at ALL at the Mineshaft. Back again to encounter a black Puerto Rican type who said his name was LANCE, but his body was beautiful, his head-hair tightly curled and his body-hair looser, and HE necked nicely even after he came, and I began to feel this wasn't such a bad place after all. Then reached out to a collegiate type who did NOT want to be kissed, though I asked as I nuzzled his neck if that bothered him, and he said "No." Do you like being sucked? He would answer in the affirmative, though he played around with my back and ass as I sucked him off, though I looked up to see that it was him and he took that as a sign of my displeasure and stopped. His cock was so VERY hard that it was obvious he wanted to come, so I worked with my hands and my mouth, usually standing up since his cock was SO sharply stiff and upstanding, and then finally HE came with a series of thrusts and spurts, playing gently with the back of my head as the only concession to humanity in the whole series, not even liking to be hugged. THEN got to a shorter fellow with a sweet body, and when WE started kissing his sharp teeth and avid mouth and cracked tongue became a bit much, but he loved to nestle in my arms, liked my body, and later very tentatively suggested that he was taking a Greenwich Village sublet for three months, and Richard Lascsek wrote his phone number down and gave it to me for after Wednesday. I began to think I was emitting some sort of pheromone that attracted anyone, but was disabused when I started sucking on a fellow in the basement who was into degradation, saying I was a cocksucker and liked his big cock and had a tiny cock myself, but when he grabbed my cock out of my pants and hooked one of my balls the wrong way for a WRENCH, I shouted "Shit" and put myself back and moved away. Wandered from top to bottom and back to top, looking at people, than at a pair, who would get together and enjoy lovely affection, and in the basement a cute kid and his rather dumpy friend were going at it for HOURS, and I watched, tried getting in on some of the side action, and actually succeeded in sucking on the tiny CUTE Italian's cock with the MARVELOUS body, pectorals like shelves, soft hair, nice cock in a ring, sweet skin, and then someone with Rush felt me as I felt him and I sucked and sucked on his soft cock to no avail, but he went down on MY soft cock and came up ROD-HARD, so I sucked him off and he came and I kept working on him until he pulled me up, AND WE KISSED AND KISSED AND KISSED and he said his name was Bill and then he left. The trio had gained another humpy number, and I was JUST ready to leave when a BEAUTY passed, so I followed it down, he joined the kid and his partner, and I went up after a lot of looking-on and started sucking on him, but he didn't care for it, and he had a sort of puffy belly but a LOVELY face, and then I gave up when he said he wanted to take a break. Lots more pissing this time, in various corners of all the rooms, and various pieces of furniture (the desk at the top doorway, the temporary blockade downstairs, another bench-set) toppled over for a very REAL sense of danger, and Bob said that it has been a firetrap with only the center wooden stairs, though Arnie reminded me it WAS downstairs and the doors had ALWAYS been there. I had about 3 beers aside from the free one I got with the entrance fee of $2, had a lot of Rush that wasn't very good, had inflamed my eye trying to put in my contacts, but it seemed to feel OK through the evening, and rather wished I could share in the comradely puffs of joints. Though it seemed to be darker in some of the orgy-areas, I still thought this was by far the best night: lots of affection, a few people who weren't afraid to talk, not too many of the old farts (though there WAS the tattooed ancient crawling on his knees trying to fix up a teetery bathtub for pissing into; and later in the morning lots of the REAL leather numbers showed up to spit on backs, twist arms, piss on slaves, and strut in their hard-heeled boots), and I could stay away from the scat. Lovely music at times, plus one Sufi-sounding piece that I was sorely tempted to ask the name of, though I knew it would too-far violate the spirit of the place. With THAT experience I would return in a week, though I STILL was accurate when I told Bob that I STILL turned down lots more people than turned ME down: the guy in the plaid shirt who came over, 3-4 times, not seeming to remember he'd been there before, the guy in the leather who didn't seem to know WHAT he wanted, the stand-up doer in the stall with the nice body, the emblemed tee-shirt, other nice cuties in the shit-room, though others there allowed me to suck or neck before turning away, and I felt more into the BALANCE of activity: outgoing and incoming, though I came home and shot (as Bob suspected I might) like a HORSE to get rid of pent fluids at 5.

TUESDAY, 5/6/80: Note from FALK CLASS #9 (4/29/80): She DOES keep track of payments, because she charged both me and Amy $6 for this class, and it's JUST the single one OVER the 8 I've paid for already.
1) She suggests I revise "The Connoisseur" FIRST so that I can get into characterizations and consistent points of view FIRST with something SMALL, rather than going on into something new. She returned "Acid House" and "John, a Love Story" to me, saying that if I don't bring anything new in next time she'll read one of the SHORTER pieces and tear THAT apart.
2) Both she and Amy were pleased with the favorable indexing response from Bowker, and Kathryn said to bring the pages by (she didn't have any) so that we could find what to send to them.
3) Rather than going through Vantage, which is too expensive, simply take it to a PRINTER that she knows about who'll print the J/O Survey far CHEAPER, if I REALLY want to go into the business of handling my books myself, though she warns again that it'll be lots of hassle and little income, plus having to spend my own money for ads in various publications.
4) To Garodnick say this IS the Table of Contents, include sample chapters, and send out the first five chapters, with DIAGRAMS to be included.
5) The rest of the session, rather than the part which was spent trying to get Amy's enthusiasm for HER historical romance burning and reading parts of Ghislaine de Beausoleil's AZALAIS cock-thumper, was spend on the J/O Survey:
MUST HAVE SUSPENSE. Think of it as a motion picture (she has Brigitte Bardot and George Saunders, photographically, above her desk so that she can think what THEY would do in the situation) and write about SOMEONE YOU KNOW IN A SCENE YOU KNOW. With HER talk about "it not working on its own," I think of a BOOK EDITOR, who edits detective novels, getting the manuscript LETTER BY LETTER because some magazine ran the WRONG-BOX NUMBER, and HE identifies that it has something to do with a series of murders, so he has to read EACH LETTER as it comes in and analyze it for motive and violence. She KEEPS saying that I should do something PLOT-WISE with it, and then Dennis comes up with his "I'll Show You Mine If You'll Show Me Yours: The Sex Survey" 6-page write-up on Wednesday, based on what we talked about, and I'll show THAT to Kathryn next time, too, to get her opinion.

WEDNESDAY, 5/7/80: LLOYD MOORE!: He phones at 3:40 just as I'm stepping out to the store for food for lunch, and I sit watching the silent picture of "Amelia Earhart" as he goes through his incredibly complex story-of-the-moment. I'd heard from Jack, his ex-lover, that he was in some bizarre ménage in New Jersey, but only now do I find out how bizarre it actually is. He starts by asking me about Rolfing, which he'd had the first lesson of at the urging of the woman he's living with in New Jersey. I tell him about "cooperating" with the Rolfer rather than looking at it as "something that's done to your body," and he says that the first felt somewhat deeper than a massage, but he wasn't sure he wanted to continue. Then he gradually starts talking about his relationship (only after I ask him where he's living now), "Oh, still in New Jersey, with this woman and five kids." "Is there a sexual component?" "Yeah, but I'm not very sure about what's going on there." "How many experiences with a woman have you had---two, three, four?" "If you count anything permanent, this is the first one---oh, I played around a bit, but this is the first one of more than twice." "Then you have to expect a bit of learning time." "Yeah, I guess I do---she's a pretty powerful woman"---then a pause---"and it's complicated because it's a triangle now." When I express interest, he continues to talk, and this pattern continues through the two hours. He FIRST gave me the idea that he moved in with this woman and THEN fell in love with her 13-year-old son, but THEN he said that actually he moved INTO the house to support the 13-year-old SON, and only THEN did the woman decide that SHE wanted to have something to do with him sexually. Toward the end it comes out that his FIRST approach to the family was to the 20-year-old son at an est seminar back in 1978, when Lloyd propositioned him and was given the "No, but let's become friends" bit. THEN he went over to the house, fell in love with the then-12-year-old, and only THEN became involved with the mother. "It was clear to me when I was actually LIVING there: when the police called for someone to come down to bail out the middle son, the 16-year-old, I had to move the shift car so that she could get to the automatic-shift car that SHE could drive, and he found that he was just "automatically" the person in authority at the police station, taking charge and authority over the wayward son. It later turns out that he's "slept, but not in the sexual sense, you understand" with the two sons who are next to the oldest, who refused him in the first place, and the next to the youngest he's even had sex with, at the son's initiation, just before he permitted himself to be seduced by his math teacher---who happened to be a man. So I had no trouble telling Lloyd that he seemed to have pretty open channels of communication with everyone in the family except for the mother. At which point he started into a bit of ancient history, how he surmised that Marian, his friend, the plain, flat-chested one who can only get really sexually excited when she's very drunk, probably competed with her sister, buxom and attractive, for their FATHER'S favor, and the father said yes to the sister and no to her, and she's been wanting to play catch-up ever since. But the sister's life isn't simple either: her husband divorced her, and MARIAN'S husband moved in with her and at least one daughter (I know about the daughter because it just came out over the weekend that the father had been to bed with the daughter, and Lloyd was thinking about bringing that daughter into the house to give a female point of view, at which point I added that she'd be an OUTSIDE point of view, too, and then somehow Lloyd thought about going to bed with her, too, then wondered for the fifth time in the conversation why things were so complicated. By this point I'd gotten onto the fact that he LIKED it complicated, and told him so, and he rather wryly admitted it). Also, the father had given Marian the house they all lived in, except through improper money management (namely, it seems, kicking out the father of her five sons, then kicking out the stepfather) the house almost became lost, at which point Lloyd stepped in, bought up the mortgage, and is in the process of dispossessing her of the other part of the deed to the house so that HE has the whole thing! (It was at about this point that he brought up the "Course in Miracles," told me a bit of its history: about the Columbia professor who almost committed suicide because she kept hearing voices, but her friend the Columbia professor told her NOT to commit suicide, just LISTEN, so she began recording what the voice said, brought it out in a book form, and sells it at Weiser's for $30 for the three, but he'd bought so many of the workbooks, hoping that his family would use them, that when they didn't he had some spares, so he took my address to send me one, saying that he couldn't really get through the book, and then agreed with me by saying that you had to KNOW what the book was about before you could understand the book while reading it---and then he said "My wife and I understand each other this well, too---isn't that great?" I kept saying that in the short time I could hardly hope to get a balanced view of the relationship, but I thought SHE was getting what she wanted and others were growing much faster than she was: the young son who was convinced that he wasn't gay (he wasn't attracted to other men, and it was more the affection than the sex that he was interested in, though he had the courage (which Lloyd denied him, saying their relationship was always that open that he could ask) to ask "Why don't you just ask me if I want to have sex?" one afternoon when they took a tour through his plant and Lloyd came up with an IBM-mother-right-or-wrong story like my LSD one when he said that the house purchase was made MUCH easier when he told his manager about the situation and was told that probably IBM's "moving and living" expenses would cover it, and found that it would!!) and ended sooner than they'd planned. So Lloyd asked if he wanted to have sex and he said yes and that was the only time they'd spent away from the family ties. He and Marian had gone to Dallas for a week for the "try moving there" IBM money, had been alone and liked it, and figured he might NOT like time alone with Jeremy because he felt guilt HIMSELF. We talked about how different the generations were, agreed that it was best to be of THIS generation because we KNEW how drastically it had changed and how quickly, and both were silent about the NEXT 20 years.) though his two older brothers voted AGAINST the two of them moving back into the same bedroom and living openly as "sleeping together." I kept pushing at why the score of 2-3 WON in the election (and vaguely wondered what happened to the other two voting sons). He said he'd tried that about a month ago and didn't want to offend anyone, but he seems more and more intrigued with the idea that it's HIS house and he's been letting everyone have what THEY want, yet he might start in to having what HE wants! He fantasized going off to Europe to live with his stepson, but I said that the mother would probably have a lot to say about that legally, and he said that he didn't know WHAT came to a person as they passed their 16th, 18th, and 21st birthdays, though when they look into the future they see themselves becoming "just friends" though the kid sort of balks about talking of Lloyd's grandchildren, he seems clear that he wants children of his own. Lloyd admitted to feeling great about "growing up" with the youngest, since Lloyd had diagnosed himself as "being stuck at some levels at the age of 12 or 13," but "now, I've definitely gotten past the point of puberty, which is a great advance," and I agreed with him. Now if he can just KEEP UP with the son in his rapid development, so he's not LEFT BEHIND at a disadvantage, and talk the MOTHER into changing quite a bit (though he said she no longer screams at him for hours on end, which is good: she seems not to use her emotions in a FEMININE way but in a MASCULINE way, and he detects great stores of hurt and pain and not-wanting-to-face-reality way down at the bottom of HER, having kicked out two men and expressing amazement that HE doesn't leave.), it might be a pretty good situation. He said it's like living in an est seminar where no one quite believes this is REALITY. But he seemed enthusiastic about sharing everything, like a proud father in a different sense of the word, though he touched only very lightly on the guilt he felt about going to bed with someone so much younger than he was. Dennis asked, when told about it, "What does this guy LOOK like? He must be DYNAMITE to seduce everyone he meets," at which I said he was just very OPEN, and Dennis had to admit that he'd surprised a number of people into sex by being open with THEM.

THURSDAY, 5/8/80: ACTION / NO ACTION: Of course most of it has to do with my upcoming root-canal on Friday. "The Lost Horizon" is appropriate here too: the difference between the older brother who wants to remain in the enchanted democracy and the younger brother who "has so many things he wants to do in the outside world" mirrors the difference inside me between the two factions: one wants to merely rest, the other wants to do and strive---and suffer? I think again of the worm in the sand-crater on the Hawaiian beach: trying desperately to get out, it would patiently try and try and try and try to walk up the sliding walls of the crater, but then, finding itself still on the bottom, it would abandon itself to sheerest existential terror, writhing and twisting and snapping itself taut and curling into the smallest knot within frenzied seconds. Then it would stop, motionless, without even lungs to heave to betray the recovery from the efforts, and then again would begin the slow frustrated attempts to walk calmly out of the sand-crater. How this seems so emblematic of life! Whether viewed as THIS life, struggling toward goals that recede as we approach them, or MANY lives, wanting to return to form though we know increasingly that form denies us what we seek, the analogy is painfully apt. Form brings toothache and heartache and bellyache. Yet absence of the form brings fears even more basic: loss of individuality, loss of uniqueness, loss of that-which-we-may-despise-yet-that-to-which-we-cling: SELF. I try to meditate, bringing in the Peace be Still energy so appropriate, and my mind twists inside my placid body like the contorting worm in the sand-crater. When my body outside races and DOES, my mind can lie relatively quiet---recovering energies for another frenzy of spasms? Then I sit, and the mind twists and roils inside so that I fancy I can feel intestinal twists of cerebrum coiling and uncoiling like that starving worm. Of course, I could have saved the worm: true Deus ex Honda. But the worm would not have learned the lesson and I would not have learned the lesson (of guilt??). So I continue to twist on the skewering spit of the mind, refusing the peace dangling like some red-gold carrot before my eyes, and write this before my session that I may have something to bounce from AFTER the session. I feel like standing on opposite sides of a room and shouting at myself:
Stop torturing yourself!
I try, but I CAN'T stop it!
That's stupid; misdirect yourself, entertain yourself, jerk off, telephone.
But that doesn't STOP the anguish, it just puts a lid onto it, building it up MORE.
WHAT anguish?
The anguish of living,---
Stop it, that sounds trite; I don't want another list!
I don't like indecision.
No one does---so decide!
(Somewhat mollified) Yes, but if I decide, I don't have all this drama.
Then you have to decide between the drama and the anguish versus no drama and peace.
Can't I have both?
You know the answer as you type the question---of course, but it's the BALANCE---
Then I have too much anguish.
Then stop it.
How?
Again, you know how before you ask: do a session; it's that simple.
BUT I WANT TO BE dramatic.
Then be dramatic.
Then I'm unhappy.
Then be unhappy.
No, I don't want that either.
Then stop being dramatic, you can't have it both ways AT THE SAME TIME.
(Smiling) So at least I can alternate.
"The heart can only hold as much as pain has hollowed out," to brutalize Gibran.
Yet I get hung up in the fucking woman upstairs---even when she ISN'T FUCKING.
Only IF you want to: if you REALLY get into the session, you KNOW she vanishes.
Yes, but---
Never mind---take the next step---do the session.
So I DID the session and things DID lift, and it DID feel better to get into action. After TUESDAY'S session I phoned Eylert and found that he IS as sexy as he sounds, bright eyes and reddish hair, talking about how nice Heidelberg is, though most of the secretaries do most of the indexes on a freelance basis, and I was glad I didn't leave the index delivery to Dennis, because Springer has a FABULOUS new IBM xerox machine and collator which EVEN copies on BOTH sides of the page, which I didn't know about until the repairman showed me AFTER I'd finished the single sides of the double-sided bibliography. Xeroxed over 500 sheets (3 copies of 131=393+338=731) which at 5 would have cost me $36.55, which was GREAT, and it did it so fast that the guilt didn't even have a chance to build up as it usually did---though I'm glad I wasn't doing JOYI, since people were looking at what I was doing as they interrupted me. Then the NEXT day, after ANOTHER session, I lugged the pages down to the Jewish place and was so turned off by his negativity that I went around the corner to get him down from 7 to 6 (it's MY paper, after all) per sheet, and I TRUSTED him. Phoned Dennis then during the lovely afternoon to have lunch outside, so I took care of other things and we ate at Capulet's from 2-3:15, at which point I decided to see how they were doing, got a $40 quote for 10 reams of bond, and went to Barney's to find they had the $2.69 bond back, so I bought 10, punched 2 with 3-holes for $1.00, thereby saving myself ABOUT $14 over the REGULAR 3-hole paper, and then they were FINISHED with my job, so I lugged them back with aching arms to find DENNIS jerking off in my apartment, saying "Gee, you really ran back, didn't you?" but I had to shower VERY quickly to get off to the ASI meeting, which was interesting enough, and then to Actualism, which was rather an anticlimax (see ACTUALISM 52), though it said a lot about soul, then down to Dennis's for dinner until 1:45 and his alarm jolts us awake at 9 am and we have sex until 9:45 and have more of his marvelous cantaloupe-lime-orange-cinnamon soup and muffins for breakfast, and I HAVE to get upstairs at 10:30, put things away, pay bills and send out resumes, and type this at 12:30, having to meet him for Cookery at 6:55---FAST DAYS! And only PERIPHERALLY do I think about my first root canal just 24.5 hours away from NOW.
Forgot that AFTER I'd typed NOTEBOOK 298 on Tuesday, still before the session, I took some notes on an envelope by my chair which I now transcribe:
My sadistic mind tortures my body like a child tortures a kitten: with nothing better to do, out of an idle curiosity for tolerances and reactions (and without any of the LOVE that the child at SOME level FEELS for the kitten).
Do I keep the ionizer on and feel DRIVEN or shut it off and sink into lethargy?
Do I phone or let myself be phoned?
Do I cruise or let myself be picked up?
Do I act or be acted upon?
Do I publish my books or forever wish and curse my not having published?
Do I fix the tooth or let it continue to bother me?
Do I delay my session only to permit myself to howl and produce these wretched words?
Then I sit and permit the courting pigeons and the dropping, moving, rocking, squeaking, laughing, talking woman upstairs to annoy me to distraction.
But as I reported to Alice last night, after remembering it for about the FOURTH time after forgetting to note it down: THERE'S ALWAYS THE SENSE OF FREE WILL AND CHOICE: I'm activated because I WANT to be activated; don't do the session because I don't want to do the session and want to remain activated because I want to see how my mind twists through the next set of curves; know when I DO a session that it will probably be lifted. And Alice said THAT was just A-OK as she gave me the circled finger and thumb to show her approval.