2009 4 of 7
WEDNESDAY, 6/10/09: Pee at 7:27AM and up at 8:57. Take notes on dreams that I record as an afterthought after 6/12's dream. Pee. Start jerking off and Piri interrupts first to say that "Exit the King" is closing on 6/14, and she can get tickets from some Broadway Box site: when could I go. I say that today's matinee would be fine, and she interrupts my jerking off the second time to say we got the tickets for $72.75 in the mezzanine. Cum, phone Sharon to cancel our session this afternoon, have breakfast, and get out to meet Piri in front of the theater at 1:45. Geoffrey Rush is quite remarkable, Susan Sarandon looks and acts exactly like Susan Sarandon, and I don't recognize Lauren Ambrose under her wig, gown, tear-stains, and royal train. Startled to hear "You will die at the end of the play," and I tell Piri about my two-act entitled "I Shall Die at the End of the Play." Watch "Were the World Mine" from Netflix yesterday and today. Eat and get to the Koch Theater to meet Leon at 7:03PM, late since the tickets were early this time, and sit glumly through "Lifecasting," with a pretty-legged Robert Fairchild, "Mercurial Manoeuvres" with a Gonzalo not nearly so pretty-legged as before, and a VERY dated "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" with a mugging loose-trousered Philip Neal. Depressed home to do Spider from 10:20-11, can't stop and continue to 11:30, and continue damnably to 1:15AM to 50.68583 at 250 up after 2 wins. Bed at 1:52AM Thursday.
THURSDAY, 6/11/09: Pee at 6:40 and up at 8AM, thinking I might nap if 6:08 isn't enough sleep. Watch, while having breakfast, a two-hour "Supercoasters" from the past which I've not recorded as having seen. Call Marj just after 11, she answers, and we FINISH the proofreading that's been lying here since MARCH. Do Spider from 1:15-2 to 50.68568, unhappy at 250 up again after 2 wins. Drag myself to the gym, and back to get my Visa bill for $2500, and then look ahead in the calendar to find that I'll need to write tax checks for $2100 on Monday, 6/15, so I'll need lots of cash from my account! Do the TV Guide sudoku, look through the "Bhutan" which ISN'T the book I wanted, but it's good enough, and have an early dinner to get to the Met at 7:15 to meet Charles in the seat and see a boring production of "Giselle" except for the marvelous dancing of Robert Bolle, who does an INCREDIBLE number of entrechats, seemingly effortlessly, as part of his second act death-dance. The audience is wild about him, Paloma Herrera almost getting lost in the adulation for HIM, and people are talking in the elevator about finding out when he's dancing next. Glad I got my tickets EARLY. Charles has to go back to Bill, blind in one eye, on the island TONIGHT. Back to whatever I do until I get to bed at 11:59PM, checking that the last "Giselle" I saw was in Florida with Hubbe, the previous live one WAY before that.
FRIDAY, 6/12/09: Pee at 5:25 and up at 9:13AM, making up for yesterday. Get to the Schwab website to find Ball Corporation down slightly from what I bought it for, so it'll be good for a loss in next year's taxes, and sell about $8000 worth to fill up my checking account for taxes, Visa, and travel. Decide to use TKTS for plays this weekend, Piri going up to Albany for art shows this weekend, but getting us tickets for "Mary Stuart" for next Friday from TDF for only $32.50, certainly underselling TKTS. Spider 9:55-10:25 to 50.68831 at 251 up after 2 wins. Have breakfast and get out about 11:10 to TKTS, finding a line for the first time, but only "Next to Normal" is good for tonight and "Blithe Spirit" for tomorrow matinee. Back to get $100 cash from HSBC (so many acronyms!) and groceries, slipping Ron $20 cash as I put down my bags in front of the elevator. Up to climb twelve flights of stairs (20-32) and down in five minutes, then finish reading DeLillo's "White Noise" and indulge in saltless pretzels that kill my appetite for lunch. Can't resist Spider again from 1:55-2:30, rewarded with a NEW HIGH of 50.69094 at 252 up after 2 wins. Decide I have to catch up with this, order HH meals for next week, and get Ron's call that my food has arrived. Put it away and finish this at 3:30PM, deciding to have lunch at last, and I've also managed to avoid getting into scanning the Russia-China slides, the next-to-do on my list for the last two days! How long can this go on? Down to get the mail and can now watch "I've Loved You So Long." Effective work by Kirsten Scott Thomas, quite a sad movie, and put it into the mail as I leave for "Next to Normal," falling in love with "Gabriel," not quite understanding all the twists in the plot, and think the "Let's all go into the light" a rather phony ending, though the appreciation of Natalie, the daughter, for a family that is "next to normal" is touching. Home and read more of the Lincoln Kirstein book and get to bed at 12:40AM.
SATURDAY, 6/13/09: Pee and type dream at 6:08AM. Up at 6:54, thinking too much, and look at various prices for Burroughs' books on Amazon and eBay, getting an unreasonably wide range of prices: still have no idea what to expect from Gail and Al for some of my books. Still agonizing about taking the expensive cruise of many Arabic countries, and total the trip expenses for the last ten years, a fantastic amount of money, but still not convinced it's "worth" the upward of $10,000 that the trip would end up, not even considering a single supplement. Get the Times, go through much of it, figuring out the cryptic crossword with the help of Pope's speller, and it seems more complicated than most. Feel VERY sleepy, so try to take a nap, but it really doesn't work, so I get up to do Spider 10:55-11:45, getting an OK 50.69071 at 252 up after 3 wins, and then perversely continue it through 1:05, when I have to wash and dress and leave for "Blithe Spirit," getting a sixth row seat from which I can still use my binoculars to see all the wrinkles in Rupert Everett's and Angela Lansbury's faces. Cute play, with many more twists than I'd remembered, especially the role of the maid in bringing the wives back. Back to bring up the mail, finish the pretzels while finishing the Spider from 5:05-5:40 for a GREAT 50.69573, a new high at 254 up after 4 wins. Then read more of Wolfram, but my eyes are closing, and decide to catch up with this to 6:55PM, now a good time to put on MORE deodorant (I really seem RANK these days!) to get to the Village Playwright plays at 7:30. Get one of the last seats at 7:55, and the plays are still about coming out, and friends and relatives discovering that someone's gay. That's over at 9:45 and I'm back to have dinner and read more and get to bed at 12:57AM Sunday.
SUNDAY, 6/14/09: Pee and type dream at 7:13AM. Doze and wake, thinking, "It must be about 10," and the clock reads, precisely, 10:00. Up at 11:33AM: I guess I'll do ANYTHING to not start scanning the Russia-China slides. Have breakfast, read the Times, and climb 15 flights up (in 3.5 minutes) and 10 flights down (in 2 minutes)---in no particular order, though probably the flights down immediately followed the flights up. Nothing like becoming self-conscious while typing these notes. Play Spider from 1:35-2:10, described as minimal, but getting to a new high of 50.69836 at 255 up after 2 wins, and can't resist the impulse, being so close to 50.7, to continue to 3:45 to a FANTASTIC new high of 50.71448 at 261 up after 7 wins! Then decide to take the final item by the horns and get out the slide scanner. Try a few slides at the very highest density, and it takes ages to e-mail each one, so I decide THAT'S not the way to do them. Start in batches of 16 (when I figure out how they go in, trial and error as before), which takes about ten minutes, so I get the Lincoln Kirstein book on my lap and pass the time during the passes. Get the first 80 slides done and feel VERY good about it. Get to bed 12:37AM Monday.
MONDAY, 6/15/09: Wake briefly at 2-something and pee at 5:20. 7:30 dream for which I wrote an indecipherable note that looks like "showrock in bus, hoping to j/o." and got up at 7:58 to get involved in looking at Roberto Bolle on the Internet to 10:35AM! Had a late breakfast, maybe scanning more slides, and talking to Marj for a couple hours, and then get to a sad Spider 1:25-2:45 to 50.71416 at 261 up after 2 wins, then stop to fill out my estimated income-tax forms and checks, mailing them at the dot of 3PM. Look at mail and get back to Spider 4:15-4:55 SAD to 50.71401 at 261 up after 2 wins, and I couldn't pull myself away for ANYTHING useful, continuing to 8:15: BAD to 50.71046 at 260 up after 3 wins. Then sit down with dinner in front of television in High Definition in the 700s, realizing that I can GET Travel and Animal World and other "premium" cable channels NOW with my Pgm2 TV setting. End up watching now-dead Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur in three episodes of "Golden Girls." Bed at 12:02AM Tuesday.
TUESDAY, 6/16/09: Pee at 5:21AM (how many times has it been 5:21AM?) and again at 6:15 and take a Viagra at 7:01 and up to j/o at 7:31, playing through the new Porn 5 tape to a final tepid release at 9AM, staying with TV programming through History Channels best bridges and megastructures to 11AM. Then down for yesterday's mail and try to satisfy my addiction to Spider, starting at 11:35AM and going through to 12:50PM to 50.70468 at 258 up after 3 wins, and note MISERY for my continuing to 3:25PM to an absurd low of 50.67401 at 247 up after 1 measly win, flogging myself until I got at least that after a series of 5 and 6 losses. Have lunch while reading Kirstein and carry it into the bedroom to finish scanning the last of the Russia-China slides, and then put them into boxes and get down the Mexico slides, deciding since they're only 151 of them to add my first slide-recorded trips (from photographs) to Alaska and Tikal. Finish that just after 8:50PM and put on dinner for episodes 4-6 of the second season of The Tudors, finding that I'd seen 4 and 5, but 6 was new to me, with the graphic deaths of Thomas More and Cardinal Fisher, with Henry starting to think that Ann Bolyn was hexing him. Bed at 12:50AM Wednesday.
WEDNESDAY, 6/17/09: Wake and look at the clock to find it's 8:47AM! As reported to Sharon later in the day, I seem to MENTALLY see that I've slept very close to 8 hours, but EMOTIONALLY feel a wordless free-floating anxiety. Try Actualism to change my feelings after I shit at 8:50 and dress to take down the Netflix movie so I'll get the penultimate Tudors-season-two disk quickly, then undress and get back into bed to have a wonderful FUGUE from 9:25-10:25. I'll record all of that in Sharon's session. Get out of bed with eagerness to try getting a $125 price (for Edgardo for Ken's birthday change-of-plans to the Beard for a barbecue) from Colleen first, then Claudia, who phones back to say she LOVES noodges and fussers, which I'd feared I was being, and said she was delighted to give me the discount since I so SELDOM asked for any special considerations, making it clear that it was for this once ONLY. I was delighted.Then to Google for a TRANSLATION of "Time to Say Goodbye," and find it's NOT about an impending death, as I'd thought, but a REAFFIRMATION of an EXALTED life---though in Sharon's session I realized it could ALSO symbolize the joining of two lovers as they sail into DEATH! Try calling Marj to share my feeling about the song with her, but she's got the phone off the hook. Try searching for another copy of "The Mandala" since Amazon reported that the copy I'd ordered was SOLD, but can't find any other below the previous $125. Also checked Google to find that "When---things past" comes from Sonnet 30, part of my morning fugue. THEN I connected my far-future fantasies to Stapledon and looked HIM up on the Internet to find that his ARCHIVE contains FULL TEXTS of practically ALL his books, including many I'd WANTED to read but couldn't find copies of. WONDERFUL. Finally get through to Marj at 1:30 with my one-word introduction "Transcendent!" Do some other things and she calls back and we talk until 2:50, when I realize I have to get to the gym NOW in order to get to Sharon at 4:30, which I do, but find her door LOCKED. Lucy helps rapping for me until Sharon appears from the far doorway at 4:31, saying, and finally checking, that my appointment is actually for 4:45, not 4:30, and she and I BOTH check to find that that happens to be the case. WONDERFUL session with her to 5:30, PASS CVS and go back five or six doors to pick up my prescription, and get in at 5:45 to have a late lunch while watching the episode of "Life After People" about oil and cars and highways and Detroit, then an hour of the new volcano where Krakatoa was, which takes me to 7:45, when I leave messages about seeing Alice Neel's exhibits tomorrow or Friday with Len and Doug and Charles (none of whom call back), check with Piri, who LIKED the uptown Neel, and Mildred, who HATED the uptown Neel, with whom I find I'll be gone through the July restaurant week, but she makes a reservation for us for next Friday at Ruth's Chris, practically the only place I REALLY look forward to. Then back to Channel 13 for an ununderstandable "Chess" from the Royal Albert Hall with Adam Pascal, Idina Menzel, and Josh Groban---I can't follow the plot at ALL, and then a half hour on Jones Beach to 11, when I get to the computer to finish these pages to 11:40PM, still not having gotten to Sharon, which was a VERY fast, productive, smile-inducing-on-Sharon session.
SHARON B. 101 THE FUGUE 6/17/09
Get there at 4:30 to be locked out, and it turns out our sessions ARE at 4:45; I just transcribed the time wrong, thinking of the previous 5:30. Sit to read about St. Ann's paint-gun battles on Pierrepont Street in The New Yorker out of sheer coincidence. I start with my dreams, asking what to do when, as Marj says, there seems to be NO connection, and Sharon replies that it probably means that the content is so deep and needing-to-be-hidden that it only SEEMS unrelated, but one should free associate about some details in the dream, which might lead to valuable insights. I talk about the day last week when the universe seemed to punish me for being so close to catching up, mentioned "The Mandala" sale, and getting into The Fugue. [Which I'll leave for tomorrow, now at 11:46PM Wednesday, and I MUST have something to eat before going to bed.] [Now at 12:35AM Friday!] I've been reading the Kirstein biography: he's rather like me: obsessed, having grandiose ideas, few of which work out; always needing to be busy or he feels he's not doing enough; totally self-centered, though he has a wife and numerous lovers. I watched The Tudors II, episodes 4-6 last night, and his struggles for control are part of my "set and setting" for The Fugue. Ken's request for the barbecue evening on 8/20, his birthday, substituting for the cheaper Russian Tea Room, puts me in mind of Edgardo, who I want to translate Roberto Bolle's interview AND translate "Time to Say Goodbye," which I later GET from the Internet, though I really want the possibilities of translation of "partiro" and "per strada," which are clearly NOT "goodbye" and "the street." Think of the sweep of time, which according to my fantasies are ALL PRESENT. Think of reincarnation, and my "disinterest" (which Marj insists should be "UNinterest") in rice AGAIN makes me think of my usual "mot": "I've been a Chinese peasant in so many incarnations that I've had my cosmic quota of rice." But, imagine: a Chinese peasant in 2000BC, stuck in nowhere, with no form of anything like entertainment, would, if he were like me, dream of being reincarnated 4000 years in the future in a civilization replete with undreamed-of wonders: living in the capital of the world, getting weekly supplies of three meals and a snack every day, having images and sounds and art and music available at the touch of a fingertip, computers not even near any fantasy-realization, living on the 20th floor overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge: what a FANTASY. Just as I think of my website eventually including my DNA so that civilizations 4000 years from NOW would be able to RECONSTRUCT the framework of ME, who could then READ my website and REMEMBER that I lived 4000 years ago and FANTASIED living 4000 years in the future, going from pre-science to "crux of science," at time when the physics, chemistry, biology, science of every kind, as well as economics, sociology, sexuality, family relations, ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE were on the cusp of change, and I LIVE THROUGH THOSE in this lifetime, and create my own future in which I live at the NEXT crux, when another dimension, another level of discovered cosmic granularity and expanse is brought to fruition, and people from the distant past are resuscitated to tell the future what the past WAS like, though everything IS in the present. As later I said to Marj, "When you die," is NOW! Think of Stapledon's sweeping imagination, and vow to look him up on the Internet, to be flabbergasted to find that ALL his out-of-print fiction is IN his archive (even though it turns out I've read most of it). The past and the present and the future are NOW. My website will be my fame and immortality LITERALLY into the future. I can't wait to talk to Sharon for the first time in three weeks, having cancelled the last two sessions for plays. AND the plays, AND the galleries, AND the museums, AND the new friends (though neither Len nor Doug respond to my request Wednesday night to join me in viewing the two Alice Neel exhibits on Thursday; Charles DOES call back to say he's still on the island; Piri DOES call back to remind me that we're going to "Mary Stuart" Friday night; and the stack of things that I have to do are FINALLY caught up with by my finishing scanning my Russia-China AND Mexico slides to the computer, ready to be sent on a flashdrive to Tris for the website. AND I've got the cash that I need to pay my taxes, and bills, and entertainments, AND Mildred even called to make reservations for Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which I really like to go to. I try the first motions of Actualism, but don't get past the gathering, though that probably helps clear the way for The Fugue. THEN talking to Sharon, she says that I could have looked at the clock MENTALLY and AT THE SAME INSTANT felt free-floating anxiety EMOTIONALLY. I grokked on my description of Sunday, when I read the Times, had breakfast, and climbed up and down 15 flights of stairs in no particular order, except that I definitely climed DOWN the stairs right after I climbed UP the stairs! She uttered a helpful statement about my "worry" about having NO thoughts: "When you're not thinking, you're not alive." I repeated the statement, wondering if she'd gone too far in putting ideas in my head that I wasn't quite ready to assimilate, but it really seemed TRUE. She smiled through my recitation of the wonders of The Fugue and its attendant emotions, saying that I'd done a wonderful job IN free associating, and had come up with WONDERFUL insights, and I resolved to try to capture as many of the aspects as I could in writing up the session, even though I delayed through Wednesday, and Thursday, and now into Friday at 1AM, in getting down the details of The Fugue, and I STILL feel that I haven't adequately captured all the marvelous facets of my thoughts during that transcendant hour, not even fully communicated to Marj when I didn't get to the Stapledon climax AFTER the snowflake universes, which I didn't get to with Sharon, and also neither with Marj nor with Sharon did I capture the APOTHEOSIS of "Time to Say Goodbye," which could be a FUTURE with a lover in heaven, or just the negotiation of DEATH by the singer of the song. Think of the upcoming Beard dinners, the further work on the website, the fact that I've FINISHED my do-lists after my trip, even to finding my "lost" driver's license after my Rome trip, this morning while looking through the Capitoline Museums book, and the Rome book, and the old Baedeker guide in which I'd used the driver's license as a BOOKMARK, and I don't even know where my former list of "lost" items is. But I FIND it in my Cadman stack, and there, dated 11/9/04, is Driver's license, the third-last not-located item after my tablet for diagramless puzzles and my 3-prong camcorder-to-TV wire. And now I can fill in the FOUND of WEDNESDAY, that incredible WEDNESDAY of The Fugue. Finish this at last at 1:13AM Friday!
THURSDAY, 6/18/09: Got to bed at 12:40AM this morning, to be redundant. Pee at 5:12, and at 9:24AM up to answer the phone to have Doug say he doesn't have time to go anywhere with me this week. At 10:30 I'm sitting in the living room, idly thumbing through my books on the Capitoline Museums and Rome, and find my "lost" driver's license, replaced 12/1/04, in an old blue guide to the Vatican museums! Look back in NOTEBOKE to find an 11/17/04 note of contacting the DMV for a replacement license. Locate my old "Lost after moving" list at the bottom of my Cadman Towers file and give it a page number at the end of my LISTS book. Have breakfast late and leave in the rain for the West 19th Street Alice Neel exhibit, getting wet walking west from Seventh Avenue almost to Eleventh Avenue. Start with sitting through the 82-minute film made by one of her grandsons, which gives me a good background to look at the small---compared with the dozens of portraits and works shown in the movie---exhibit of 16 pieces, some of them arresting because of the emotional content pointed out in the film. Then walk in the rain up to 23rd to wait for a bus that takes me across to Park Avenue South for an uptown bus to 69th Street for an even smaller exhibit of 12 pieces, including a wonderful cock in one hand of a lover and an unidentifiable black object in the other hand: was it a slug, a piece of chewing gum, a condom? West to Fifth Avenue and a long-awaited #4 bus down to Penn Station for the subway home quite late, about 3PM, but happy to have taken one more item off my do-table. Have lunch, look at mail, and back to the Internet to look through the Stapledon archive, finding that I've already READ all the site's full-length fiction and "Far Future Calling." Start at 6:25PM reading his early stories: "A Modern Magician" to 6:37, "East Is West" to 7:15, "Arms out of Hand" to 7:45, "A World of Sound" to 7:52, "The Seed and the Flower" to 8:03, "Road to the Aide Post" to 8:08, and "Man's Future" to 8:15. WONDERFUL!!! Then try my luck with J. G. Ballard, and find the only two stories that I'd listed YEARS ago as unread, and READ THEM: "Journey Across a Crater" from 8:46-8:58, "Violent Noon" to 9:15, "Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty" to 9:22, "Jane Fonda's...Mammoplasty" to 9:34, "Neil Armstrong...Moon" to 9:38, and many many other magazine inserts and minor efforts to 10:55PM, feeling marvelously sated. More reading, then go out to REVEL in the magnificent view from my balcony at 1AM, and get to bed at 1:25AM Friday.
FRIDAY, 6/19/09: 9:23AM: [Note I'm on page 33, line 3.33 in WP51!] Just deleted 422 items from WP51, MAINLY the SCAB-SCAQ series of slides, but those were only 420 in number, and I DIDN'T delete the first 8 that I did in HIGH density, so somehow I deleted 412 correctly and TEN incorrectly! Noticed SCALE.WPG, which I interpret as "WordPerfect Graphic" since TROPHY.WPG follows, so I didn't delete THAT, but I deleted TEN ITEMS INCORRECTLY that started with SCA!!! Have breakfast and decide I MUST get a haircut, last one over four months ago, at 11:10AM, paying $17 for a careful job that left too many long ends. Out to Trader Joe's to buy four buffalo burgers, to the Atlantic Avenue Key Foods for hamburger buns, pick up a menu from La Pizetta, which doesn't list pepperoni but they say they use larger rounds of spicy salami. Back to get my HH package and a Netflix envelope, dumping everything into a pile on the stove before putting the food haphazardly into the fridge. Forgot to note that I got up at 8:13AM to pee, then lay back down to think of the MONSTROUS editing of the Russia-China trip TEXT to ADD the scanned slides with a desriptive line for EACH of the 271 slides! HOURS for each tray. But I later think maybe I could just put them in the VISUALS section and just mention they're there to be looked at. Then thought of the coincidence of seeing moments of the Ballard-inspired "Crash" on TV just as I was researching him on the Internet. Fleetingly wonder about Roger Ebert's health. Look at Google Earth at where I've lived? Look for travel companions for the west coast of Africa and the five Stans? Up at 9AM, I note, head exploding. Quick lunch and get out to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens at 2PM, getting there at 2:20 and covering most of the territory: great roses, almost totally black pansies, some very late rhododendrons, and lots of assorted "wild" flowers in clumps throughout the gardens. Out at 3:40, quite tired, and back to 101 Clark to climb 20 flights in a breathless 5.5 minutes, ready for St. John the Divine tomorrow. Have snacks while watching almost three hours of "The Tudors, Season 2," episodes 7-9 for the downfall of Ann Bolyn and her entire family, and then get out to the subway to be made to transfer from the IRT to the A line at Chambers Street because of a problem at 72nd Street. But manage to get to Piri before 7:45 for "Mary Stuart," which I think is a flawed production because the rain in the second act takes too much attention from the words, and the handling of the "You gave the order of beheading OUT?" as more of a slapstick routine than a tragedy. Then this CRAZY guy upbraids me for not putting a $10 bill into the cup of a black beggar, screaming at me and calling me a "Motherfucking faggot," and I really fear he might become violent. Go to the center car to report him, but the conductor doesn't pay attention until someone ELSE comes up to complain, and then a third person complains at Park Avenue, and finally the train begins blowing its horn to attract a cop, who doesn't arrive before I leave the train at Clark Street, where a couple who'd been in the back sympathize with me for having to endure such craziness; they say the crazy was still in the last car, sitting down and talking to himself. Back after 11:30PM to get to bed at midnight.
SATURDAY, 6/20/09: Try to get to sleep for waking at 8AM this morning, but at 12:37AM decide to take an ambien. Wake at 7AM to note a dream: "I've got to go back up, I need to get my shoes. And then Piri and I can stay in a cabin tonight to minimize travel tomorrow, as we did once before, and two beds just fit into the cabin space." Up at 8:16 and wolf down breakfast while preparing for St. John the Divine. Meet Ken on the subway and we find no one on the steps who appears to be part of the Sundance group. Inside for us to pee, and out to find the group gathering: 17 of us, some fairly attractive, like Ed and the leader, but most are zhlubs like us. The climb is easy because we stop in many stages on the way to the under-roof catwalk, only 12 stories up. Good (gay) guide, patient with our questions, showing us lots of things, like the Keith Haring, that I hadn't seen before. Nine of us go across the street afterwards to have lunch at Columbia Cottage, not-bad food at very reasonable prices, though Ken says he hated it. Back to play Spider 2:30-4:30, getting to 50.69785 at 256 up after EIGHT wins. Then get to the Center for the MAN anniversary party, John introducing me to Brian, who seems to be taken with me. I have only four or five glasses of wine, but maybe it was the two large pieces of cake, one for the anniversary, the other for Paul's birthday, and three delicious brownies that I ate that produced a rather severe hangover. Totally out of it when I get home, so I fall into bed at 9:30PM. Pee at 10:54 and take two aspirin, feeling almost sick.
SUNDAY, 6/21/09: Pee at 1:50AM and take two more aspirin, just about the minute of the solstice, looking out at the longest day of the year. Pee again at 5:18AM and again when I get up at 8:46AM. Get the Times and then type to 11:10, Paul calling to say he won't be visiting this summer, to my relief. But he's retiring in 3-4 years and will have LOTS of time to travel. Leave for the gym at 11:25AM, getting no flak for being there before my proper noon starting time. Out about 12:50 and decide to leave immediately for Piri's, getting there five minutes before 2PM. Good group with Alexandra, Tom Collins, and the awful Diane, who's not QUITE as irritating as last time, but every bit as self-centeredly gabby about EVERY passing thought or question in her tiny mind. Back to Spider for a TERRIBLE session from 7:20-10:40 to 50.69164 at 254 up after 4 wins. Then have dinner while watching the end of the VERY mediocre "Damnation of Faust" from the Met Opera. Bed at 12:35AM, apartment a total mess.
MONDAY, 6/22/09: Pee at 4:51AM. Note a dream fragment that I can't read: "Hy's own supervisor pushes button for his atomic test." Up at 9:23AM, maybe reluctant to get out of bed because I've vowed to clean up my apartment today, but I JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE DOING ANYTHING. Decide to get Spider "out of the way" before breakfast, but can't make any progress through impossible games from 9:40-12:05PM, at last ending up at 50.69931 at 257 up after 4 wins. Have oatment with the 6/4 dated milk before it sours. Finally do go through the Times from the weekend, and, not wanting to move, decide to finish Duberman's "The World of Lincoln Kirstein," due on Friday. Have an early lunch of the second buffalo burger, tasting somewhat underdone though I used the microwave as the timer for the minute on each side to defrost, and then three minutes on each side to cook through, glancing through all the mail piled on the table while I finish eating. Then I STILL don't want to move, so I go BACK to Spider from 3-5, decently good to 50.70154 at 258 up after 5 wins, and then decide there's nothing BETTER to do before the Beard tonight, so CONTINUE with an entirely mediocre Spider to 6:15 at 50.70131 at 258 up after 3 wins. At least write a check to Tris to mail, getting SOMETHING done today besides the Times and the library book. Find good pants to put on below my striped shirt and get out at 6:40, still getting to the Beard early. Loud atrium, so I go outside and sit in the humidity, then join Lisa, the stuttering photographer, Ron and Ken at a table in the entrance where Ken can ogle Shin, the part-Japanese chef. The only good appetizer was the beef, with marrow making it killingly tasty, but the starting cava rosé and all the wines were pretty bad, and none of the courses were THAT great, though the scallop was so good that I could actually finish it. The spine-shaped array of quail pieces was delicious, also. Home just after 11PM and read New York magazine just to stay awake, and in going to bed clear off the dining-room table and much of the junk on the floor, just to get SOMETHING done. Get to bed at 12:15AM.
TUESDAY, 6/23/09: Pee at 5:26, 7:15, and 8AM! Something WRONG?? Note two dreams which I've forgotten already: "Fred me please." and "Carolyn and Tris staying WITH me and helping boost my ego." Up at 9:17, feeling terminally lazy. Start Spider at 9:30, wanting to get to breakfast early because of the lunch with Mildred at Ruth's Chris at 1:30 today, and then BY THE MEREST CHANCE she calls me to tell me not to miss the movie called "Moon," and in the conversation she says we're meeting for lunch on Friday, and I say it's ALSO today, and she reminds me that it HAD been scheduled for today BEFORE she called Ruth's Chris to find that they serve lunch only on Fridays and Saturdays! And I absolutely WOULD HAVE GONE if she hadn't called, only to find it closed and wonder what the hell happened. I simply forgot to ERASE the notation for Tuesday when I made the notation for Friday! GREAT LUCK. That means I DON'T have to have an early breakfast, so I continue with Spider to 10:45, ending with a pathetic 50.69557 at 256 up after 2 wins. Then have breakfast and DETERMINE to type the notes remaining on my desk, finishing those now at 11:52AM, and print out all the pages and can't RESIST going back to Spider! From 11:53-1:25 I manage an OK session to 50.70063 at 258 up after 3 wins, but I can't leave it go. Continue to 2:35 for a GREAT session to 50.71126 at 262 up, the highest yet, after 5 wins, but it's not yet the highest SCORE, not better than the 50.71448 of 6/14. So I go ON, kicking myself, yet enjoying it, to 3:10, wondering if I've gotten the highest score yet, but it's only 50.71385 at 263 up after 2 wins! Try ONE LAST TIME, and still fall below with 50.7137 at 263 up after 2 wins, so I just bull-headedly push ahead, finally going to 4:35PM to a NEW HIGH of 50.72164 at 266 up after 4 wins. AT LAST! Go down for the mail, find that the second-year series finale of "The Tudors" is only ONE episode, a real rip-off! Watch that while having the penultimate buffalo burger, having a terrible time separating the last two frozen patties. Watch some of the extras packaged with this paltry disk, and then do the TV Guide sudoku and through ANOTHER two-week issue, which EVERYTHING seems to be currently. Really nothing much of interest, sadly. Then at 7:40PM back to the recording of the spiciest sentences from Martin Duberman's "The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein": p.42: LK "became downright angry...when Howard casually talked about how easily Lincoln got an erection." p.123: Lincoln and his father shared a twin-bedded room. "Could he risk masturbating with his father nearby?...he went ahead and started to play with himself on his bed. After a time Louis called out, "Why don't you get a machine to play with?" They both chuckled." p.195: It turned out that Philip's "idea of Heaven" was having a simultaneous orgasm with another man, a notion Lincoln found "plain screwy." Clearly, it wasn't a very sexy book. Started reading it on 6/12 and finished 6/22, and will take it back tomorrow with two other books. Now to type a new book-want list at 7:46PM. Twenty titles on the first new list since 2006 finished at 8:20PM. Put a few things away, not yet wanting to look at the IRS statement, and finally file the food that I got on Friday with their proper labels for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Sit down with Channel 740 at 9:30 and watch the end of "The New Nostradamus," and then continue through midnight with "Life Without People: Water" and "MegaDisasters: Gamma Ray Bursts." Encouraging pre-sleep watching. Bed at 12:10AM, making a list for tomorrow, and decide that I can phone the IRS and ask if they've changed the rule about estimated taxes only having to match the previous year's income.
WEDNESDAY, 6/24/09: Pee at 3:51 and 7:07AM. Then up at 8:56 with a dream that I take a note of, and find the listing for "Moon" that Mildred recommended seeing and watch its trailer on their site. Find it's playing at Times Square. Mail the Netflix package at 9:45, print out a page of last week's dreams for Sharon, record this morning's dream, and catch up with this at 10:18AM, ready for breakfast. By chance there's a DISCOUNT for the last weeks of the New Museum admission, down to $8. Make a list of things done today, to make me feel better: breakfast 10:30-11, talk to Marj 11-12:05, talk to Schwab and solve my General Motors problem until SCHWAB sends me something, and talk to Marj again about my relief to 12:15, talk to IRS and THINK it's a problem with my 4/15/09 check, for which I call Schwab back in order to get a copy of to 12:35, talk to Spartacus at 12:36 who says I can pick up "The Tudors III" in front of his door, since he's sleeping from an 8AM dentist's appointment that's left his jaw feeling "like a rock" with anesthetics, and I get to him and drop books off at the library and find I have NOTHING reserved, so I'm glad I went upstairs and got a Pynchon to read---all 1086 pages of it---and back home by 1PM. Watch the fun "Krod Mandoon" to 2:15, then get to the gym, and back in time to cook up the last buffalo burger before getting to Sharon at 4:45 after taking the laundry out, feeling exceedingly virtuous with the day's duties. But don't record Sharon's session until Friday! Look at the mail and do a quick Spider 8:20-8:45 to another high of 50.72424 at 267up after 2 wins, then have dinner while watching three episodes of "The Tudors III." Think to get to bed just after midnight, but THEN think to list what I'd done in the line of "nudism" BEFORE MAN. Come up with 17 items: Beacon Baths '72, Club Baths '72-'80, Continental Baths '71-'74, Everard Baths '73-'78, 58th Street Sauna '70, Hellfire Club '81, J's '91-'93, "JO" (9 in '83), "JO party" (15 in '80), MAN ('93-'09 - 17 years "only"), Man's Country '72-'80, Mineshaft '79-'85, New St. Mark's baths '78, Nine-Plus Club '73, Paul Cazenave starts ('80-'09), St. Mark's Baths '71, and Wall Street Sauna '75-'93. Bed 12:16AM Thursday.
SHARON B. 102 6/24/09
I talk about my enthusiasm about getting things done, then "the universe punishing me" by hitting me with both the General Motors and IRS mailings yesterday, which I really didn't want to look at, but then when I decided to handle them after all, detailing the General Motors and IRS problems and their seeming solutions easily come by earlier today. Also mentioned the kindness of the universe on Tuesday morning, when Mildred called to recommend "Movie" and incidentally tell me that Tuesday's Ruth's Chris reservation had been impossible and we were now having lunch on Friday. I would have gone to the closed restaurant and only THEN remembered our conversation, if we hadn't talked that morning. Then I bring out the sheet of dreams, after relating as much as I can remember about the dream this morning, realizing only when I glance at the end of the page that two consecutive dreams have been about breakfast. Also remark about the two dreams in three days involving settings at 1221 Dietz, which would of necessity involve my mother, though in both cases she wasn't seen or even heard, but clearly her presence was there. Sharon tried to connect "the universe punishing me" and my mother, but I said that her only punishments were corporal, and she never threatened me, or send me to bed without dinner, or made any sort of EMOTIONAL component to the punishment, though I did refer to the ultimatum I made her when I said I'd walk out if she continued in her self-destructive ways, and she promised to do better. The time seemed to go very fast; I kept trying to think of things to say, interrupted by her saying that she put food for the pigeons out on the windowsills, and talking about the extraordinary amoung of rain we'd had this June. I still haven't made reference to the fact that we've just passed our hundredth session. She said she was going on vacation next week, but that we'd have two sessions then before I left on my trip.
THURSDAY, 6/25/09: Pee at 4:42 and 7:51. Up at 9:20AM. During the day finish episodes 4-8 of "The Tudors III." Decide that the E train that takes me to PS1 will easily return me to the Gay Center for the 5PM videotaping of the History of MAN. The Ely Street station is the first stop in Queens, and I follow the handy map on the back of the PS1 ticket to the entrance, where a mountain range of mammoth wool is being erected for some summer-long exhibit of excruciating self-consciousness. In to get my sticker and look down the first hall to see the top half of Leandro Erlich's swimming pool. Down to look up at it, and it's a decent idea for which hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in its realization. Then to Johathan Horowitz's "And/Or," and can't quite decide to keep watching the documentary on Leni Riefenstal or to continue with the rest of the catch-as-catch-can exhibit. Find that many of the "permanent" exhibits are drawings in the stairwells, rather like much of the "art" at the Gay Center. Up to the second floor for Lutz Bacher's "My Secret Life," and it's even more trivial than the exhibits downstairs. Into the Kenneth Anger exhibit, and they niggardly show only ONE movie in the huge kunsthalle at a time, but you can peer into the videos on the floor of "Kustom Kar Kommandos," "Puce Moment," and "Eaux d'artifice," which effectively minimize their effects. "Fireworks" and "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" seem to have constant showings in two smaller side rooms, but, as usual, what I really want is a fast-forward button to skip past what I'd consider as "filler" to get to the "good bits." Not many people watching anything at all. Take the Spring 2009 Newspaper as the most tangible memorable item from the exhibit. Watch much of "Scorpio Rising" until 5:10PM, when I figure they'll be well into the MAN taping at the Center. The subway comes quickly and lets me off at 8th Avenue and 14th. Get to the Center at 5:45 to find 3-4 MAN members sitting on a bench: starting time has been moved to 6PM. I read, watching a string a visually unattractive dykes pass by to various meetings, and get back upstairs to find only three guys waiting to be recorded. One 75-year-old tells of his first experiences, notably with the tuxedoed canapé passers (no, it wasn't the canapé that was tuxedoed) at the first-anniversary party. Then Robert Speller gets up and monopolizes two reels of tape with his stripping and being-raided tales. I leave at 8:30: I just can't take much more, leaving two nudists to be taped. Paul thanks me for showing up. Actually manage to pass a day without Spider. Charles left a message for me to call him, and he cancels out of the ballet tomorrow (so I try Mildred, Ken, Steve, and one of Al and Gail on Friday, finally getting Leon about Friday noon) and the Beard buffet on Saturday (so I call Colleen, who charges me $20 for the cancellation). DAMN! Back to finish "The Tudors III" and get to bed at 1AM Friday.
FRIDAY, 6/26/09: Pee at 5:10AM and up at 8:20. Clean up the place a bit (deodorize the bathroom, put stuff away in the living room, bring the sheet up over the rumpled bed), have breakfast, find that "Dam Busters" is NOT at the end of the Tudors' DVD, and start "The White Countess," which it turns out I hadn't seen before, being Ismail Merchant's last film in 2005. Al and Gail get announced from downstairs at 10:05AM, and he sorts through the Burroughs books while Gail talks, and he ends up offering $275 for 19 books, which I have to keep because I want to transcribe the notes I'd put into them (ANOTHER STACK to worry about doing!), and anyway they didn't bring a check, so they'll come back when I call to tell them that the books are ready to be picked up. Again order only three days of meals for next week from HH. Play Spider 11:30-12:25, good to 50.73218 at 270 up after 4 wins, my third consecutive high score---preparing for a disastrous run of failures as usual? Then prepare to be early at Ruth's Chris, but get there at 1:28PM and she's already seated in the small front dining room which I'd never seen before, with a baby who disturbs me until it leaves with its unapologetic parents about 20 minutes after we arrive. Mildred has a martini, which makes her loud and coarse by the end of the meal. I make the mistake of ordering the filet, and NOT the filet and shrimp, so that my bill is over $60, which I really hadn't intended, though the filet was monstrous and delicious; the starting crab soup was good, but the ending sorbet and fruit custard was disappointing, though maybe it was just Mildred calling me a stupid fool who doesn't know anything about life. She stalks off east, saying "See ya," as we exit from the air-conditioned coolth to the humid warmth of the sidewalk at 2:40PM. Back to get a larger carton of HH food and an enormous box of filler-filled junk with my nine jars of Omega-3 pills that will take me through March of next year. And the Netflix film "The Reader." 6:40PM: Watch a lightning storm pass to the north, just LOVING my view, as the temperature falls from 78 at 6:20 to 69 at 6:40. Then I have to dress for the "Swan Lake," to meet Leon and get a pass to replace Charles' ticket. Get out early and meet Leon at 7:25PM in front of the construction-blocked Avery Fisher Hall to get to the Met to find the ticket-allocation computers aren't up yet. Get a pass for Charles' F105 seat in the Dress Circle, and Leon admits he's never seen a live "Swan Lake" before. The sets, which I check to see that I'd SEEN before on 6/26/05 with Murphy and Corella!, which I neither remember nor recorded anything about, are spectacular, as are the costumes, and the Benno of Blaine Hoven is quite good, and Veronica Part is competent but not spectacular as the swans, and sadly Roberto Bolle doesn't have much to do, and when the audience erupts in cheers, Leon leans over to ask if it was that good, and I have to admit that it wasn't. Charles didn't miss that much. Applause lasts until after 10:30, when we wait a long time for the local, but at least get seats. Home after 11 for a late dinner of soup and toast, and start, then decide to finish, watching "The Reader," more impressive than I'd expected, getting to bed at 1:54AM Saturday.
SATURDAY, 6/27/09: Pee at 5:42 and 8:28, get the Times, and get up at 9:37AM. Breakfast while watching the extras on "The Reader," and I realize I'd really considered VERY LITTLE of the import of the movie as regards German guilt, second-generation reaction to German involvement in the Holocaust, conditional and unconditional love. Then decide I MUST catch up on this, after leaving word with Doug that if we're going to see the New Museum it will have to be Thursday or Friday of next week, and leaving word with Carolyn to call me. DO catch up with this by 1:45PM, when Mildred calls to ask if I am still annoyed with HER from her behaviour yesterday. I say no, probably lying. She says "Good, then I look forward to seeing you at 5PM." OK. Leave ANOTHER (annoyed) message with Carolyn, summarizing by saying, "If you don't show up, it'll cost me $85!" Now to lunch, STILL not having gotten the Visa bill off my desk, glad at least that I sent the check already.
SUNDAY, 6/28/09: 9:13AM: Up AGAIN to type ANOTHER dream, but have to get a bit of this into the journal: Got to bed at 9:45PM after taking two aspirin and putting the fan on. Pee at 2:40AM and take another two aspirin. At 7:03AM I shit a tiny turd and at 7:10 type the first dream, along with material that rightly should have been transcribed here. At 7:42AM I check that the Times IS outside, glance at a couple of articles, pee weakly, drink water, and get back into bed. Wake about 8:50AM and for a few moments wonder how the "lost time" went: I certainly didn't stay awake, thinking, yet I couldn't remember dreaming, though I definitely had a feeling of having been "somewhere else" in the interim. Then the memory of the second dream (lost electrical cord, my Neo [which I had to VERIFY was the name from the machine itself, since I really couldn't quite believe it was the name of the Reeve character in "The Matrix"] in a bucket of water) returns, and I marvel at the "disconnect" between waking, wondering, and recollection of the dream. Now at 9:20AM go to transcribe the dream in DREAMS. Finish transcribing dream at 9:28AM, ready to get into my day by phoning some of the people at the Beard last night to see how they liked it (or not). Mildred and Shelley (who had to be called on Monday because her credit card didn't go through, but she called me on Tuesday without rancor about paying so much for what she valued so little) didn't care for it. Steve accepted it for what it was. Carolyn left last and loved it! Play the BEST-scoring Spider ever from 12:40-1:20 to 50.73774 at 272 up after 3 wins. Then, of course, it went downhill for the next week or so. Debated going to the Gay Parade, partly because the weather was perfect, but read more of the Pynchon, passed time unproductively somehow, maybe caught up with some trivial tasks, hating myself for not doing anything CONSTRUCTIVE about the website, putting it into the LOWEST priority, essentially. Then, lacking anything better to do, went back to Spider 7:20-11:25 for an AWFUL downfall: to 50.722715 at 267 up after 2 wins. I figured it was in some way to console myself about NOT participating in The Gay Weekend more: through laziness, age, lack of drive, lack of sexuality. Giving myself a vacation from "must do" by just frivoling away time. Enjoying myself in the way I felt AT THE MOMENT, rather than "shoulding" anything. So Spider was five hours today: some people just go to a bar and drink, others "frivol" on the Internet. I Spider. Big deal. Bed at 1:10AM Monday.
MONDAY, 6/29/09: Pee at 3:18 and 6:18. At 6:40 I take Viagra, do an Actualism, and start j/o at 7:15, successful enough to 8:15; then to 8:30 scan the porn from Porn 5 that I hadn't gone through. Scan the three hours of "Life After People" at the END of Porn 5. Breakfast and read 9:25-10:15. Catch up with some notes, maybe, and decide to see "Moon" today, playing Spider 10:15-12:30 until a snack, then 1:10-2:10 when I have to leave for the 2:50 movie, managing to get back up to 50.72722 at 269 up after 3 wins. Have little cash, but find I can buy my $9 senior ticket with my Visa, saving 18. Annoyed to sit through 15 minutes of ads and previews until 3:05. It's mediocre: I'm glad Mildred didn't tell me ALL the plot, but we disagree in that she "knew" the "rescue" group was coming to kill him and I didn't get that. I assumed they would ALL die as "mere tools" (as clones) but she didn't. She got into all "iffy" material like the brain-mind connection, memory, the TECHNIQUE of cloning which was just ignored in the movie, as the "death of people" cause is ignored in "Life After People." Try sneaking into "Up," but get an amusing jolt when I see you need GLASSES to see the 3-D picture, which I guess you get when you BUY the ticket, and Spartacus later said that they charge $5 EXTRA for 3-D and IMAX. Back to get an envelope from Marj, with 20 4 stamps for some forgotten reason (well, I guess for supplementing my 90 foreign airmail stamps for which is now 98), without a bill, with the notes on the first 30 pages of ATLANTC. Sit down AGAIN with Spider 7:30PM-12:30AM for a DISASTER of a session: 50.69852 to 259 up after 1 win and I just STOP! Bed at 1:30AM Tuesday.
TUESDAY, 6/30/09: Pee at 6:55 and 8:40 and up at 9AM. Have breakfast of the first oatmeal in a long time with adequately defrosted milk. I can't resist feeling like the clones in "Moon": MUST keep notes on what I do, MUST go to the gym today, MUST do the piles of stuff on my table, now down to TEN piles; MUST get more stuff to Tris for the website, MUST answer Don about my slide-scanning, MUST get to Marj's envelope, MUST transcribe the notes from the Burroughs books I'll be selling to the Barracanos. So what do I do? Skim through Netflix for "watch now" movies and watch "Revelation" until about 12:15PM. Then do an OK Spider 12:35-1:20 to 50.70376 at 261 up after 3 wins, and then GET to the gym, picking up my free laundry liquid at Gristedes after having gotten a copy of the memo from the Cadman secretary. Back starved for lunch, read more Pynchon, watch fascinated as the last rain of June blackens the sky from the west to the east, and then at 6:15PM decide to DO something: get through the HSBC statement (only on my table for 4-5 days) by 6:38, and FINALLY go through the Schwab Visa statement, finding out about the Best Buy renewal (3) charges, increasing the amount spent on the Bhutan trip, and putting two "new/old" credit cards into the Visa file to be handled later. This takes to 8:15: no WONDER I didn't want to get into it (it's been haunting me on the table for at LEAST 2-3 weeks). Then go through the Time-Warner 700-series channels to 9:15, finding I have IFC, BIO, Animal Planet, and a few other new goodies which Spartacus says were announced in a letter, which I think I didn't get, "explaining" the Time-Warner monthly rate increase from around $40 to around $75. WHAT A STEAL!!! Talk to Spartacus to 9:50, and watch the POV he recommends about the trial after the gay-killing two years previously in France when it turns out the "Life After People" isn't as described in the TV Guide, but as in the Guide from the Time-Warner box. COMPLICATIONS! Laboriously get a new box of index cards out of storage to 11:50PM, sweating in the humidity. Change the calendar to the July page AT midnight. Bed at 12:40AM Wednesday.
WEDNESDAY, 7/1/09: 5:30AM type dream and pee. THINK; Actualism doesn't work to send me back to sleep, and in mild desperation get up at 6:53AM. Catch up on this and spend some minutes throwing away old stuff from the tiny stamp box. Lots of "storage" problems to handle, the first being the Cadman shelf which has been on the floor and on my table for about a week now, to be handled NEXT, now that last night's DO reduced the number of do-stacks to EIGHT, a NEW LOW! Finish this at 8:05, the workmen beginning their labors on 75 Henry exactly at 8AM. Perversely decide to get Spider "out of the way" (he said hopefully) NOW. THAT goes satisfactorily until 8:50, ending at 50.70895 at 263 up after 3 wins. Then I e-mail Don to 9AM, Sandy about Vineyard to 9:25; have breakfast to 9:50; go through old mail to 10:25; the Cadman pile reduced by 11:07, deliriously counting that I have only SEVEN piles left, so I leave a message for Marj with that. Then handle Schwab (though she has to call me back on Monday) to 11:25, and decide to start typing Burroughs notes---after I see what pages to print! Then decide to change the ribbon first. But see the "reservoir" button and try it with that pushed, and it's a BIT better, but it still has the black line through some of the printed lines. Will change it later. Print the three needed NI pages, and then Marj calls back at 11:42 and we talk, compulsively, about her phone machine, the Vineyard e-mail, Don's messages, my piles, and our various other manias until 12:38PM. AND she verifies that it's spelled Kodachrome! And the last DREAMS page printed was 88. Start typing BURROUGHS NOTES at 12:44PM.
BURROUGHS NOTES 7/1/09
On Friday the Barracanos offered me $275 for 29 Burroughs books---only ones I hadn't marked up, including some which cost me as much as $40, but I decided to sell anyway. Then I noticed the notes I'd written on index cards of things that I wanted to remember about the books WITHOUT underlining in the book itself. Now that I've sold them (and Gail called yesterday to ask how I was doing on typing the notes I said I wanted to transcribe), I want to get rid of "pile 7," which are the 19 books with notes in them. I alphabetized them. All typos STET!
1) Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology: Read 5/2/83 ($6.50 price marked)
p.70: Security Checks: Do you have any doubts about Scientology? Do you have any unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard? Do you know any Communists personally?
p.72: I would not be writing this article unless I was convinced that Scientology is worth serious consideration.
p.77: Whole cities are dreamy and somnolent with alpha waves. Sex wave orgies sweep the world....Mass telepathy breaks out. Any waves you like.
p.102: In Mississippi they strung a nigger up under a railroad bridge, burning his genitals off with a blowtorch....A woman bit the cock off her husband because he was queer; and her copper loving brother stomped him to death. My comment: SOS---Same Old Sex. Finish 5/5/83.
2) APO-33 Bulletin: 2/13/91 ($3.00)
p.6A: Clark St. station stood up there by some young punk. Walked into a bar down near the bridge...
p.11: I call it "navigational writing." Plot the course of each days writing as you would plot the course of a ship...
p.14: Brutal D&W drivers operating in the poorer districts of London used a monster wooden pestal and tamped the cadavers to a fine yellow powder.
p.17: ...44 airliner dead including pilot Clark (left on Clark St.)...minutes to go my toy soldiers put away in the attic...
p.18: ...down cobble stone streets young unused face quiet American eyes...clock ticking away to nova...minutes to go...
p.19: St. Benjamin Day Tuesday March 30...minutes to go....Dead star shaking off in layers....St. Benjamin Day, Tuesday May 30, 1964. [OTHER 1964 dates agree, so I ASSUME 1964 is correct, but March 30 is Monday, May 30 a Saturday.]
p.18-19: [column 3's are connected] [But it's BORING and EMPTY at last---not even cock-sexy, as he CAN be]
3) Arcade: 12/2/80
"Border City" actually pictorially EFFECTIVE.
"Danish Operation" mediocre but for last two sentences: The doctor goosed a young waiter and the scalpel disappeared up his ass. He pulled an indelible pencil from the waiters fly and signed his bill on the waiter's cuff "as you say."
"The Cut" more bizarre: You'll love him talked Life Jelly....He pulled his Abbreviated Fibrous and wrote the bill on instruments.
4) Blade Runner (a movie): 2/18/82 ($3.95)
p.2: Now who is to decide whether I take laetrile or use an orgone accumulator for my terminal cancer? Me or the FDA? After all it's me that's dying.
p.3: Is this freedom? Is this what America stands for? [very true & very black]
Middle: Flash of erect penis with a glistening bead of lubricant....his shorts sticking out at the fly. He stops at the foot of the bed and pulls his shorts down, and his dick flicks out like a switch-blade as Billy clicks his tongue. He kicks his shorts over his shoulder and stands there...Roberts has thrown back the sheet and is sprawled naked with a hardon, one foot sideways on the floor showing the dirty sole. They look at each other and their throbbing phalluses pick up the same rhythm---throb throb throb---heartbeats like drums in the dark room....they do a slow-motion underwater act, Billy squirming like a clam, flushing pink and purple and iridescent as the radiator starts gurgling and trilling and thumping like a copulating dinosaur and they ride the radiator sound-effects to a chorus of tremendous thumps that shake the old building to its foundation. [nice CLEAN sex in the middle, where the card was]
5) Cobble Stone Gardens: 11/26/81 ($3.00)
p.22: He invites Nick Shanker of World Films and Philip Granger of Amalgamated over for a possum dinner and he is boiling a yellow tom cat in a bidet full of piss heated by two leaky blowtorches. Possum he says it is, but anybody can see it is a horrible great yaller tom cat the fur all on too and the guts in belly swole up, teeth showing eyes popping out of its head and B.J. is capering around the bidet adding a cup of Saniflush, a dash of blueing, as he croons the Possum Song. "Possum ain't far...Thar he are thar..." He points to the bidet.
p.31: The young soldier was rubbing his crotch. Looking down at himself he unbuckled his belt and opened his fly and eased his cock out turgid at the crown and the root stirring, stiffening. He pulled his cock down to the chair and let it snap up. He grabbed his cock and pretended to pilot a plane, balancing the chair on two legs and making machine gun noises....his body like greasy copper in the sun, his penis pulsing wildly. [and on the back of THAT index-card note: WACCA 0.5% medium for enumeration of Leuconostoc and Streptococcus lactis subsp. diacetylactis 1619]
6) Darazt: 12/2/80
"Clark" (Captain and Street) again
crotch-level paragraph: There I was bound hand and foot...young street flesh...rubbing sticky...his warm hands carressed my body... [the old WB sexy]
"Cable Street" by Lee Harwood. Footnote interesting on how to battle cops on horses: ...planks with nails knocked through...marbles rolled under the horses' hooves proved equally effective. Also the waving of sheets of paper in front of a horse's eyes would invariably cause the horse to rear and so throw the rider.
Guess he's gay from "our seed mingled" on next page. IS he "of noble birth...poor? [and on the back of THAT note: reticulo-olivary connections 65]
7) Dead Fingers Talk: 6/15/84 (1st Eng. edition)
p.7: She seized a safety pin caked with blood and rust, gouged a great hole in her leg which seemed to hang open like an obscene, festering mouth waiting for unspeakable congress with the dropper which she now plunged out of sight into the gaping wound.
p.20: Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out.
p.34: Only dead fingers talk in Braille.
p.52: On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. [Living in NYC]
p.55: Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence---their speech centers are destroyed---except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionaless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.
p.58: Another fucking matriarchy, Margaret Mead notwithstanding...
p.65: A contingent of howling simopaths swing from chandeliers, balconies and trees, shitting and pissing on passers-by. (A simopath---the technical name for this disorder escapes me---is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.) [HA]
p.66: Curare kills by paralyzing the lungs. It has no other toxic effect, is not, strictly speaking, a poison. If artificial respiration is administrered the subject will not die....So there I was completely out of K.Y. in the headwaters of the Baboonsasshole.
p.72: Maybe I can cantaloup. Then I had to check you. Promise me to take out his mouth, nose receding flesh.
p.85: My dear, I'm working on the most marvelous invention---a boy who disappears as soon as you come leaving a smell of burning leaves and a sound effect of distant train whistles....Coprophilia---gentlemen---might be termed the hurumph---redundant vice.
p.88: Speakers are often doused with gasoline and burned to death, or some uncouth desert Sheik opens up on his opponents with a machine gun he had concealed in the belly of a pet sheep. Nationalist martyrs with grenades up the ass mingle with assembled conferents and suddenly explode, occasioning heavy casualties---forbid a meeting of Islam Inc. within five miles of the city limits.
p.104: Came to a sticky end---His falling piles blew out the Duc de Ventre's Hispano Suiza and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted, leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstery---Even the eyes and brain went with a horrible schlupping sound. The Duc de Ventre says he will carry that ghastly schlup to his mausoleum. [p.88-105=Naked Lunch 144-167]
p.187: Now look I'm going to say it and I'm going to say it slow---Death is orgasm is rebirth is death in orgasm is their unsanitary Venusian Gimmick is the whole birth death cycle of action---You got it?
[Most of the end is cut/fold JUNK. Finished on 6/19/84]. [Second note-card lists the 31 sections of the book, 16 of which are duplicated in NL (Naked Lunch) or TE (Ticket That Exploded)]
8) The Dead Star: 11/30/80
[What's the POINT? ARE second columns the "Last Words of Dutch Schultz"? End of INNER second column agrees with end of book---40 words, some out of order. Other FRAGMENTS agree, but out of order. BOOK contains about 1165 of Dutch's last about 2000 words (book's flap). Columns contain about 2400 words---column COMPLETE and book EDITS them? Inner RIGHT book flap says "words as a point of departure, and so only use about HALF, and not REAL holes!
9) The Exterminator: 11/28/81 "Scarce" second printing
p.25: Scientists suggest That Life on Earth originate and or implemented by garbage shit deposited by Space Travellers? The Shit wrote out the message that is you In Virus. Like an ape ate the shit and said: "SHIT" was Thee Beginning Word.(
' *79' (t word. Rub out The Word. The Ape was sick for from the virus and Thee Sickness was You. Knocked up with The Word Man. [funny, but not CUT UP! Not REALLY random: 1) the to thee; be to bee. 2) WHERE did SHIT come from? 3) Lots of "helpful" capitalization. 4) Better to SEE the originals!]
10) Intrepid: 11/28/81
p.18: Love plays little part in my mythology, which is a mythology of war and conflict. I feel that what we call love is largely a fraud - a mixture of sentimentality and sex that has been systematically degraded and vulgarized by the virus power.
p.19: This is why the climax of The Naked Lunch is a strictly non-pornographic satire against capital punishment, exposing the perverted sexuality of those who execute or witness or condone it. This scene will appear pornographic only to devotees of execution. It is in fact a necessary enaction of the central sexuality of power in the nation state. Latent neuroses may well be aroused in the reader by the negative satire in a work such as The Naked Lunch, but the work itself is singularly controlled.
p.50: Remember that the variety that we invented was permutation of the electromagnetic structure of matter energy interactions which are not the raw meterial of nonbody experience. [DNA and reality]
p.51: "Reality" is simply a more or less constant scanning pattern - The scanning pattern we accept as "reality" has been imposed by the controlling power on this planet, a power primarily oriented towards total control.
p.61: The mere desire to burst beyond the circle of the self, which is a primary function of sexuality, takes the form of a desire for being beyond the self in space and time, in essential breaking of the taboos of boundary, limit and law. Reich: Perhaps here lies the solution of the riddle why the idea of death so often represents the orgasm. [Mottram's article leads me, AGAIN, to want to write "sparklers of prose." Pelieu shows how BAD it can be done.
p.97-99: [Fabulous as-is ing! Copied to be later scanned]
11) Minutes to Go: 12/5/80
p.5: Piece together a masterpiece a week.
[First cutups obviously processed and connected for humor and surprise. AWFUL. Viruses certainly "composed" of words.
Reactive agent tape cut by Lee STILL sounds like Burroughs HIMSELF. Chilling last line]: The razor inside, sir. Jerk the handle
p.43: Anyhow, here is the gimmick. Cut up everything in sight. Make your whole life a poem. You can't lose, man. [Degrades poetry AND man]
p.44-45: [explicit junk]
p.60: The Chukchee of X Siberia make an intoxicating drink by steeping the mushroom Aminiita Muscarius in warm loganberry juice. They drink the decoction and the urine is activated and distributed according to rank.
p.63: Corso: uninspired machine-poetry.[At least he's THINKING. My Nuts to Go?]
12) Port of Saints: 11/28/83
p.9: Dont tell me the lights are shinning /Any place but there.
p.47: We dropped our pants and shorts and stepped out of them facing each other both hard and I saw that his was just like mine and felt a drop of pearl squeeze out the tip and at the same time a drop squeezed out the tip of his I could see through it like a lense that the tip was a little open the way it is when you are really hot.
p.53: He was painfully sky, his knowledge of sex culled from Coming of Age in Samoa and a book entitled Sex and Marriage.
p.62: Some...were engaged in group sexual exercises. A circle of boys sat on the karate mat looking at each other's genitals in silent concentration. Now one of the boys was getting stiff. He walked to the center of the circle turned around three times and sat down hugging his knees. He looked from one face to the other. His eyes locked with one boy and a current passed between them. There was a click as if a picture had been taken. The boy in the center of the circle opened his legs and lay back with his head on a leather cushion. A drop of lubricant squeezed out the end of his phallus as he arched his body and squirmed. The boy selected kneeled in front of the other studying his genitals. He pressed the tip open and looked at it through a lense of lubricant. He twisted the tight nuts gently with precise fingers as if he were tuning up a piece of machinery handling the phallus as a precision instrument running a slow finger up and down the shaft rubbing lubricant along the divide line feeling for sensitive spots in the tip. The circle of boys sat silent lips parted watching faces there calmed to razor sharpness. The boy who was being masturbated rocked back hugging knees against his chest. Quivering in an ecstacy of exposure his body blurred out of focus. He lay there unconscious. Two boys carried him to a mattress and covered his body with a blue blanket. Another boy took his place in the center of the circle.
p.64: ...all boy stop fuck jack off he get there hot like fire...Wild boys written long time ago in picture book. Book called "breathing book."
p.72: Two snake boys...wearing fish skin jock straps...one opens his mouth and his fangs spring out an inch long and he bites the other. They are both biting and hissing and shooting yellow jissom all over the sheets...its rather like cyanide kills in a matter of seconds. The snake boys are immune to its effects.
p.72-73: ...Bubu Boys...are all dressed in pink and purple and yellow shirts to match their sores. They stand there languidly scratching each other and smoking little pipes. The whole thing is mauve and ripe and putrid sweet. We put on rubber gloves and masks. When they strip down in examination no boy undresses himself another boy does it then undresses another they do everything that way feed each other light each other's pipes scratch each other's sores wipe each other. The sores are a subject in themselves erogenous tumescent superating. One boy shows me how he can make a sore crawl all over him and onto another boy. They stand there passing sores back and forth. One points to an eye chart and hits a small e across the room with a jet of purple pus....When we get one spread his crotch and ass hairs are erectile tingle hairs they call them got sex poisons drive you mad to come rotten and Brad lost all control screaming "I don't care if I do go putrid I'll feel the tingle hairs if it's my last act."...at the climax he arches his body and hits the ceiling and his skin splits open from crotch to chin. The other boys pull it off in sheets and underneath the boy has a new skin white as marble. They pull the skin off his cock the one underneath flips out spurting in this condition after the moulting they are so sensitive a breath of air will bring them off.
p.77: Friedricks Ataxia most advanced stage...pirhanna fish in the swimming pool, black widows in the lu.
p.95: I was by now established on a wholesome regime of four morphine injections per day mixed with cocaine, six pipes of opium before retiring, and hashiesh throughout the day to keep up my appetite and enhance sexual vigor. [True?]
p.129: ...and the red haired boy twisted in a last bone wrenching spasm his cock pulling straight up against his stomach. Others formed along line on hands and knees and each boy stuck his greased finger up the ass of the boy in front of him. The line twisted and writhed as hands gently caressed the balls and phallus in front of him and vibrated a finger up the ass the whole lines threw their heads back teeth bare gasping a reek of sperm and rectal mucous visible as a haze around their squirming bodies. Boys were laying down with their knees up while other masturbated them with gentle precise fingers caressing the rectum and tight balls the new boys quivering in ecstacies of exposure as color flashed through their bodies and they came in a burst of rainbows.
p.129: ...now they are all spurting at once feet twisted together gasping writhing bodies melt in light...now his fingers touch and something runs through me like a golden river and I am spurting out gilt edged clouds...feeling something red and hot pour out of me...I could feel myself light up inside with pink light...
13) The Retreat Diaries: 2/16/81 ($2.50)
p3: Writers don't write, they read and transcribe. They are only allowed access to the books at certain arbitrary times. [Interesting that Burroughs uses "Wanna camel" in HIS dream that EDITOR had BEFORE! Editor TOLD Burroughs the dream? Burroughs' dreams VERY fragmented. Ginsberg's The Dream of Tibet, at the end, reads like MY dreams.
14) Roosevelt After Inauguration: 11/29/81 ($2.50)
p.8: And then there was the pilot who bailed out of a burning plane, leaving the passengers to crash. He was placed in some danger when he inadvisedly attended a mass fungeral for the inextricably intermingled passengers. Fortunately, he had a plane revved up in the cemetery.
p.38: Wherever Briggs or Anita Bryant can find an audience to listen, you will find people in that audience who agree with Thom Robb: people with "Kill A Queer for Christ" stickers on their cars....Fundamentalists...can't expect to be treated like reasonable people because they aren't reasonable people, any more than a mad dog.
p.39: Here's a company cop in Kingsville, Texas, dragged a Negro physician off a first-class train seat and ground his eyes out with his club. The caption for that one is "God's Law." [Whew! Strong, and RIGHT, stuff!]
15) Sidewalk 2: 12/4/80 [seems to be 1960?] (50)
p.9: ["Minodge" faintly trivial. "Poem" rather fun, at last.]
p.17: ...the COWBOY with the filter is a KING SIZE queer.
p.18: ["Sebastopol" needs too much knowledge]
p.19: ["The Dress" interesting for its CAVERN]
p.23: ["Four Poems" ugly]
p.25: ["The Preference" vaguely transsexual: Bordwick/Brodwick?]
p.30: ["The Jewel"---priest does a Maori boy and sees Christ?]
p.35: ["Suicide" is rather gory (Gorey) fun!]: ...paint a room with himself. Imagine, the entire walls blood-spattered, shards of bone stuck like flags in the map of a battlefield...hair fringing a crude impasto of entrails.
p.36: ["The Truck"---SUPPOSED to be MUSKRAT, MUSGRAT, MUSCKRAT? Humpy guy]
p.47: ["Do Cherry Stones Explode?"]...heard a sight as sweet as unzipped sin...
p.48: ["Have you seen Slotless City?"] p.50: The Beautiful Sickness is hard to kick. p.51: [Cutups are ONLY understandable when ORIGINAL is given, as HERE]
p.54: ["Views and Reviews" very "artsy" to read!]
16) So Who Owns Death TV?: N.D. (75)
[Pelieu's LIKE Burroughs---TRYING for effect but just using WORDS. Weissner's same too---but HE owns Death TV, and uses Mr. Pozo and concentrates on "other world" ideas. Burroughs is STILL on Dutchman's words! And Kim! And Nova! Still Captain Clark welcoming you on board. But GOOD j/o and masturbating text ABOVE triple-columned page] The orgasm octopus spread out raw peeled dying there - slow masturbation used to be me Mister -
17) The Third Mind: 5/5/83 ($12.95)
p.19: 15. In truth, though it wasn't a collection of art reproductions---very much the contrary---The Third Mind initially included almost as many collages and graphics as texts. As the dummy of the original edition took form, the difficulties grew and diversified. The book defied the normal criteria of modern printing. In fact, the first dummy was finally abandoned because it challenged a certain Western conception of what a book should be, in its presentation as well as in its internal functioning and goals.
p.20: In other words, the succession of pages in only a convention that the reader can disregard.
p.44: [at my first cutups] I laugned so hard my neighbors thought I'd flipped....Cut up this page you are reading and see what happens. See what I say as well as hear it.
p.189: Aye, sir, a wall is budge? [A. Wallis Budge]...for thee the book of breathings now have memorized this page. [Mostly boring, finish 8/21/83]
18) Time: 2/15/81 ($5.00)
p.0: [No typographical errors!]
p.2, col 1: [read bottom to top]....The Dead Star...
p.4: ...sex is one of the heaviest anchors holding us in present time.
[Notes on number of columns to be read up and number of columns to be read down] [Some sex, mostly CONFUSION]
19) White Subway: 11/29/81 ($4.95)
[JUST TRASH!] [Melange of miscellaneous items: many repeats of other books]
Continuation of WEDNESDAY, 7/1/09: Type Burroughs notes to 3:30 through item #12. Lunch to 4, more Burroughs 4-4:25, then out to Sharon. Cough a lot, pick up cash, groceries, and laundry, feeling draggy. Take a CVS antitussive to stop coughing during ballet, and get out at 6:50PM to "Sylvia" with Bolle and Wiles, surprisingly short: 7:35-8:10, 8:25-8:53, 8:57-9:27PM. He has almost NOTHING to do, yet he smiles and smiles and the audience applauds and bravos. Take Fisherman's Friends through performance and manage not to cough, but feel awful on the subway home. At 10:20PM I take my temperature of 99.2, feeling sweaty. Take Cipro at 10:45PM, desperate. Have dinner and read Pynchon and get to bed at 11:45PM. Take two night-cold pills at 11:55. Coughing awful. 12:10AM take ambien because I'm clearly not ready to sleep with this awful cough. Sleep.
SHARON B. 103 7/1/09
Get there early, but her office clock is running about four minutes fast, so I get in quickly. She talks about how my mother's constant making me DO things has extended into my current life, with myself making me DO things. Complain about my cough, sign her forms, get her to increase the air conditioning when I feel sweaty, and say this is ANOTHER way the universe treats me when I get caught up: I get sick. SHE tries to make me feel better by saying that EVERYONE'S immune system goes down after concentrated efforts, so it just makes it easier to get sick then. I almost believe her. Talk about my "obsessive-compulsive" e-mail to Don, the goodness of Sandy's move to the Vineyard, and how I'm not hassling the upcoming Wales trip because Ken has done all the planning, the itinerary is simple, we're not driving at all, just taking public transportation, not many one-night stands, simple flights to and from, and I again verify that we don't meet next week and then have only one meeting before I leave on my three-week trip. Lots of details mentioned, but I don't feel like repeating them. Good, sympathetic session, out right on time.
THURSDAY, 7/2/09: Wake and pee at 8:15AM, feeling good for having slept about eight hours. Temperature of 98.6 at 8:23AM. Up at 8:47 and pee. Call Chin at 9:04 and wait two minutes to be told he's totally booked for the day, so I schedule with Dr. Okoh at 11:45, fourth floor, area B. Get back to finish the Burroughs notes 9:13-10:25, just as Spartacus calls and says there's no viewing area BELOW 23rd Street on Saturday, and I say the paper notes the barges are between 24th and 50th Streets, and he crazily starts ARGUING with me. I accept his news and he says for me to call him when I'm feeling better. Finish typing this, including a short version of yesterday's session with Sharon, and finish this at 10:45AM, ready for breakfast and preparing for Dr. Ogle at 11:45. I get in at 11:37, being directed to Area C. Donna is one of his receptionists, and she recognizes me but I have to ask him for her name. I get called in immediately, he says me lungs are CLEAR, my blood pressure is 110/70, and he recommends that I CONTINUE taking Cipro, giving me a prescription for 20 that costs $1.38! Also a $33 cough syrup that I take two teaspoons of whenever I need it. He's from Nigeria. Get to CVS at 12:08 and decide to wait the 10-20 minutes it'll take to fill the prescriptions, which they had a hard time finding in their system. Oh, had taken a second Cipro at 11:10AM. Out at 12:26, feeling sweaty. Temperature at 1:50PM is 100! Watch "Lie With Me" and actually SEE Eric Balfour's erect cock, unless it's a "stand-in" (HA!). Amazing what "actors" are called upon to DO! The commentary is totally childish, the actress giggling hysterically most of the time---total nerves. That's over about 4PM and I'm so worn out that I just want to lie down, even setting the alarm for 6:30 for the Beard. But after lying a while I just get up and start Spider (I cough much less when I'm sitting or standing than when I'm lying down) 4:50-6:35, finishing nicely at 50.713867 at 265 up after 4 wins. Temperature at 5:20PM was 100.1. Wash and dress in my slightly stained blue shirt, and get in to the crowded atrium about 7:10PM, waiting a long time for the four mediocre appetizers (prawn cocktails have an odd-tasting sauce; the tuna is just raw tuna wrapped in what looks like, but isn't raw chicken skin; the little bits with purple on top are stale and tasteless; and I guess the "Budinetti alla Siciliana: Angel Hair Croquettes Arancini with Buffalo Mozzarella" must have been the two balls served with a tall glass of white stuff with a bit of olive oil looking almost like egg yolk, and I GUESS the white stuff could have been mozzarella) and then being shunted into the lobby while they set up table 1. Sit next to Sylvia from New Jersey who's been to many good restaurants, had a stroke in November which accounts for her trembles and mental lacks, and we have a nice series of chats anyway, Fred Weiss trying to make a pain of himself from four seats away, actually asking me to move six inches to my left (where I have no room) so he can get away from an awkward table leg in front of his seat. Pity. The food's not that great: I don't eat a half scallop and only about an eighth of my sablefish, but the beef cheek ravioli with truffle sauce is good, and Salt Spring Island lamb isn't bad, and the cheesecake dessert is too mooshy. None of the wines were top notch, though Sylvia's husband liked the "barnyardy" Guado al Tasso Il Bruciato. Leave about 9:35 when the chef goes upstairs, and take my temperature at 99.9 at 10:30PM, having survived the evening surprisingly well. Maybe coughed ONCE. Bed at 10:35PM, then up to put the fan on and take an ambien at 10:43PM.
FRIDAY, 7/3/09: Pee at 1:50 and 3:24AM, at which latter time I take two spoons of the cough syrup and a Cipro. Pee at 7:56AM, temperature of 98.8. Seem to hear a "click" from somewhere at 8:30, and decide to leave messages on both Doug's home and cell phone, and he calls me back to agree to meet at 1PM at the New Museum, taking our cell phones. I put mine on to charge, adding his cell-phone number, and confuse these notes from the past few days to get this completed by 9:45AM, feeling considerably better with the wracking cough. Now to breakfast and figure how to do the gym today. As I dress I just don't feel like any kind of exertion, so I simply undress at the gym and get into the steam room, then shower, and dress and return home. Get a call from HH for next week's menu because they're closed tomorrow. Out to get to the New Museum about five minutes early, and as usual Doug is there already. We elevate to the sixth floor to start the exhibit, sitting in the two-person chair to watch the TV excerpts from the past 33 years for almost half an hour, then decide to walk down the stairs to the fifth floor, which is a mistake because that seems to be the floor with the highest ceiling, so we walk down about four flights of stairs to get there. Junk paintings are sparse on the walls, and the main exhibit is an almost actionless video on a smallish screen with seats for eight persons with earphones on a raised platform. Watch some of the 30-minute video, but get bored with it and take the elevator down to the next floor. This space is divided into smaller spaces, most with its own video, most rather boring, and I make sure that we look for the Takhadjian, or whoever, who has the masturbation scene. Find it at last on the second floor, and it's only ten minutes long, so we can watch the impassive orgasm twice. For this we paid $8 apiece. Look at the other exhibits, some of which are elaborate settings for only one person to view, others just junk art, or accumulations, or obsessions, and we joke about how awful some of the pieces must be that DIDN'T qualify for the exhibit. Out about 2:30 and figure to get something to eat, look into a few menus along Spring Street, and end up at Rocky's for his expensive seafood salad when they "mistake" his request for an inexpensive Caesar salad, my adequate stuffed mushrooms, and our $19 bottle of white Zinfandel which leaves me in doubt of my ability to enjoy my ensuing 6PM meeting with Ken at Il Gattopardo for dinner. Doug again embraces me awkwardly as we part, saying we'll get to the Metropolitan Museum after I get back from Wales. I'm home for little mail, take my temperature at 99.4 at 5:10PM, and leave in time to join Ken at the table just before 6PM, where he's decided on his meal and our wine already. I can't find any appetizer that I care for, so I have a half-order of their special pasta of the day, not bad with lots of bits of artichoke heart and small tasty vegetables, and we have lots of time to eat, so I can get most of the food down, including the veal that turns out to be twice as expensive as his pasta, amortizing the cost of his pre-meal Cosmo, which I finished most of anyway since he thought it was too alcoholic. The wine's not bad, and I manage to finish my dessert before we leave at 7:40 for the movie. "Le Temp Qui Rest" seems poorly translated as "Time to Leave," though it does end with the brain-tumored gay hero dying happily on a beach at the finish. Manage the whole evening without a cough, which makes me feel better. Ken invites me to his roof at 8:50PM tomorrow for the fireworks. Take temperature of 99.5 at 10:40PM and get to bed at 10:50PM, mistakenly putting Friday for Thursday [NO, my MISTAKE was to type TODAY as a "second" THURSDAY, 7/2!], and take a Cipro. Can't sleep, so take ambien at 12:25AM.
SATURDAY, 7/4/09: In MISERY at 1AM I take two spoons of cough syrup, and at 1:06AM up to powder crotch to remove the last impediment to finally getting to sleep. Pee at 6:27AM. Up at 8:59, and at 9:10 take temperature of 97.9. Take two spoons of cough syrup and lay back down. Up at 10:35, have breakfast while watching "Blood Diamond," read much of the Times but leave the magazine and book review for train-reading on the way to and from Ken's, since my magazines are all finished. Lay down much of the day. Take Cipro at 3PM and my temperature is 98.6 at 4:50PM. Have "lunch" at 5PM and read Pynchon until leaving for Ken's at 8:15PM. Get there at 8:40, he doesn't answer the phone, so I sit and do the Doublecrostic until the desk tells me at 8:50 that Ken IS there, he just didn't hear the phone at 8:40. I go up, have some bottled water, and we get to the crowded roof to see lovely massed fireworks from the harbor to the south and scattered faraway bursts from a half-dozen locations in Jersey. Macy's starts a few minutes after 9:20, still color in the western sky. The buildings perfectly frame the five barges from 23rd to 50th, but the spread-outness doesn't allow the MASSED effect that made the harbor display so spectacular even at this distance. Kids fret, drunken neighbors roar inappropriately, heads change position, Ken moves to get away from a pushy Japanese woman behind him, and the displays rather dither to a climax at 9:50. We only have to wait for the second elevator down, I have some of Ken's green gouda and popsicle-flavored mango juice, and greet his four neighbors on my way out. I'm happy I didn't cough, but still feel sick. I guess I have some kind of dinner at home, because I get to bed at 11:10PM with ambien and two spoons of cough syrup but NO Cipro. Since I didn't type any journal entries today, I just take my old note back to bed with me, which causes confusion when I type this up on Monday morning.
SUNDAY, 7/5/09: Up and pee at 8:30AM, having slept 9:20! Great! Take Cipro, and my temperature is 98.0. Bring in the Times and get back to bed, getting up at 10:20. Just finishing breakfast when the phone rings from downstairs at 10:55AM with two guests, and Gail and Al come up, quickly put my books into their bags in their wheeled cart, and leave in about five minutes. I finish my juice and morning pills. Read the Times and feel GOOD until about 2PM, when reading tires me and I start processing GORGY for Tris, finally feeling like getting to bed at 3:40, when I call Marj for lots of sympathy, and then just lie down for a few hours. Think of a way of making the buttons easy to install, and so I'm up about 7PM to start doing that, finally sending the file off at 8:47PM, and still feel good enough to scan JOYI to find I'll just send it AS IS, if he can take it, which I do at 9:16PM. Temperature at 9:23PM is 98.7. Take night pills and Cipro, deciding I won't have dinner tonight, and get to bed feeling ill at 9:37PM. Keep looking at the clock, not wanting to get addicted to ambien, hoping to get to sleep, but 10:30 passes, and 11:30, and 12:40AM, and I'm STILL not asleep!
MONDAY, 7/6/09: Doze off and note an odd dream at 1:42AM. Pee. Finally get my night's sleep and wake to pee at 7:30AM. Doze and have another dream and take my temperature of 98.1 at 8:48AM and get up and test my voice to receive the 9AM call from Althea at Schwab to finalize my AT&T that we talked about last week. Start on my journal, VERY confused about days and dates, as recorded before, and she finally calls at 9:45, completing the transaction, and I finish this to date at 10:03AM, not feeling exactly HUNGRY, but I CAN eat, so I'll delay Cipro until two hours later. Read Pynchon, who just gets better and better as I pass the center of the book, until getting to Spider for an awful session from 12:50-3:20, ending down at 50.70702 at 263 up after 1 win, just MAKING myself stop. Take a Cipro at 3PM, read some more before a late lunch, back to Spider 7:10-8:55 for a worse 50.70112 at 261 up after 1 win. Read more, having NOTHING else to do, having gone down to get a nothing smattering of mail, and take my ninth Cipro at 11:30PM, trying to catch up with tenth in SOME semblance of five days, and letting Marj talk me out of fearing getting addicted to ambien (I seem to have settled on the style of Cipro and ambien, for whatever reason) I take an ambien at 11:25 and get to bed at 11:35PM, hoping that REST will drive my symptoms away.
TUESDAY, 7/7/09: Up at 7:55AM, very happy with 8:20 sleep, take my temperature at 97.8 at 8:27, and take Cipro 10 at 8:40, deciding I can delay breakfast for 2 hours. Start reading 9:15-10:38, when I feel woozy enough to let myself off the concentration-hook by leaving word with Okoh, and going to Spider from 10:45-11:20, OK at 50.70369 at 262 up after 2 wins. Have oatmeal for breakfast, then dress and get down to the gym, just after Okoh calls back at 12:20 to say I should take Cipro for TEN days, and that Carbofed does NOT have codeine (and I managed to shit yesterday AND today), just to sit in the steam and shower, getting back to have my HH foods just arrive, filling the fridge anew. Also get "Testimony: Tony Palmer's Story of Shostakovich," which I start watching with lunch, wondering how I'll fill the time from the end of the 2.5-hour movie to departure for the ballet, and Spartacus calls and we talk for over half an hour, so I only have to fill in 5:40-6:35PM with Spider, leaving it unfinished, having forgotten to take an afternoon Cipro, and get to a REMARKABLE "Romeo and Juliet" with Bolle and Dvorovenko, both absolutely extraordinary and VERY well-matched, and the Romeo part has MUCH MORE DANCING than I remember, and Craig Salstein seduces the audience (especially his embarrassed moue when his thrown mandolin hits the stage with a crash) into cheers, almost as great as for the VERY sexy Bolle and the absolutely BEAUTIFUL Dvorovenko, with perfect balances, subtly expressed emotions, and a convincing preteen body. Home just after 11 to gulp down a Cipro at 11:12PM, then reading for an hour before having a snack of an orange, nuts, and cheese before going to bed at 1AM, HOPING to go naturally to sleep, but getting up at 1:32AM for two spoons of cough syrup and an ambien, and leave word with Ken at work that I can't go to a 10/2 Beard since I'll be vacationing in Canada 9/24-10/9.
WEDNESDAY, 7/8/09: Pee at 5:41 with old dream that all BITS have to CONNECT in a meal (whatever that means), and pee again at 8AM and 8:53. Waiting for a knock on the door by the rooftop-antenna people who are checking in G and K apartments for problems with others' reception. I'm up at 10:20, JUST finishing breakfast when they knock on the door and look perplexedly at the end of the wire beneath my bed, saying the plate should be on the OTHER side of the wall, behind my permanent cabinets! "It's live," and I'm tempted to tell them to just put a tiny TV, off, under my bed and it'll be OK. They say they might be back, but they're not back by 4PM, when I type this. Piri had called last night because she wanted me to take her picture, but got someone nearer her to do it. Left word with Chevy that I question being billed for THREE meals on the Gay Buffet. Take my temperature at 98.6 at 2PM, and manage to read to 3:30, when I MUST get back to these notes. Just DON'T feel like proofing!!! Finish this at 4:04PM, ready to indulge in fruitless Spider. Play 4:05-4:55, UGG to 50.68956 (lower even than the LAST below .7 of 6/29) at 257 up after 2 wins. Then simply lie down, having put the finally-washed dishes away, until 5:55, feeling it's the best thing I could do next. Up and wash and dress and get out at which I think is ridiculously early at 6:15 and get to The Russian Tea Room just at 6:57PM, just before Ken, the first seating in the cavernous empty red-and-gold restaurant. Get a Georgia Peach Tea to go with his gold-plated drink, and HE asks if the chef can't put together a dish ONLY of sweetbreads, prepared as the bland veal chop would have been prepared WITH sweetbreads, and I GET the delicious dish, while Ken complains about his Beef Stroganoff, unlike any he'd had before, with nutmeg yet. The single-twin maitre d' is very charming, the waiter obliging, and maybe five tables get filled by the time we pay our $106 checks. I'm home and in bed with an ambien and two spoons of cough syrup, but still look at the clock at 11, 11:30, 12, 12:30 and 1, before finally sleeping.
THURSDAY, 7/9/09: Pee at 4:48AM and take Cipro, and next look at the clock at 8:45AM, marvelling that I have NO mucus to cough up from my chest, and when I get up at 9:09 and shit a bit, there's little nasal mucus to blow out, for the first time in AGES without the urge to ALSO cough up chest mucus. Am I actually, finally, on my way to being over this? Feel the weakness of one RECOVERING, not the weakness of actual ILLNESS. Type this in celebration by 9:25AM, ready to tackle the day's Spider while feeling weaked-out. Spider 9:30-10:10 OK to 50.69213 at 258 up after 2 wins. Read. Doze. Record, maybe crazily, that I take Cipro at 6:15PM, but I might have been SO "out of it" that I played through Taipei without taking it at 3PM as I'd intended. Get out early to Morton's to find the Little People scurrying around the street for their Annual Convention, and the Kahn's arrive when I do, at 6:45PM. Norman brings what he says is a fantastic 1998 Telegraphe Chateauneuf du Pape, which he bought for over $60 then and would be over three times that now. He loves it; I STILL think it has too much "barnyard." DO love his gift that Shelley brings of a bottle of Dom Perignon, which both she and Dale have two little glasses of, but I finish most since Norman's nursing his red. Ludicrous steak/food presentation and serving. I take half my steak home, having ordered a "regular" filet at $48 rather than a "half" at $43, which would be outrageous, and have it not-quite-warmed through the next day. Take two aspirin and get to bed at 10:05PM.
FRIDAY, 7/10/09: Have a sexy dream to 3:58AM of prisoners ACHING to cum, and I'm so aroused that I feel cured enough to treat myself to what turns out to be a SUSTAINED whole-body orgasm at 4:30AM. Take a Cipro at 4:55AM before dozing off, and get up at 6:27AM because I feel energized to DO things. Do the day's Spider 7:20-9AM good (not really) to 50.68904 at 257 up after 5 wins. Probably have an early breakfast. Then my energy saps away (cuming probably didn't help) and by 11:18AM I take my temperature at 98.4 and try to make an appointment with Chin on Monday, but his earliest openings are Thursday and Friday, so I schedule for Okoh at 2:30 on Monday, just to make sure I'm ready for my trip the following week! Struggle out to the gym to sweat in the steam room and then shower, and return to find my HH food and my Netflix "Candy," which I watch twice, even though it's a totally reprehensible film with morally bankrupt characters, not helped by either the director or writer being gay---and the envelope sits on my table until I mail it Monday at 2:30PM. Have lunch at 3:55, which sustains me through the lousy re-see of "Romeo and Juliet" from a balcony seat, admittedly higher up, but Cornejo and Reyes just are NOT Bolle and Dvorovenko in stature, acting power, or dancing skills. At least I verified that the choreography is the SAME regardless of the casting. Back to get a message from Len about going to the Met Museum tomorrow, but it's too late to return his call, being past 11:30! Have something to eat, big enough that I stay up to digest it and don't get to bed until 1:35AM Saturday.
SATURDAY, 7/11/09: Take Cipro at 4:25AM when I get up to pee, but later decide that this is my last one. Up at 9:33AM, phone Len to find it's just too late for him to get anywhere near the Met Museum by 1PM today, so we schedule it for next week. I may have an early breakfast, and get to Spider 10:35-12:05, good to 50.69675 at 260 up after 6 wins. Decide to do SOMETHING useful today and finish the wonderful Pynchon "Against the Day." Then get back to Spider 3:30-5:05, good to 50.70445 at 263 up after 5 wins, but then UNWISELY think to push through until 5:35 for 50.70701 to 264 up after 2 wins, madness to continue to 6:40 to 50.70942 to 265 up after 4 wins, total insanity to continue to 7:15 to 50.71199 to 266 up after 2 wins, and desperation to start card 25 at 7:45 at 50.71719 to 268 up after 3 wins. Probably fall back into bed. Also did the diagramless puzzle in the Times magazine, and then the Saturday puzzle. Just didn't do anything useful. Kept going to OLDDRIVE and CD and GAMES for Taipei, too. Taipei, too. Bed at 1:20AM Sunday.
SUNDAY, 7/12/09: Pee at 8:14AM. Up and pee at 10:41AM. Record absolutely nothing done during the day. Maybe talked to Marj. Maybe felt awful. Played a perfectly UGG! series of Spider from 1-4:50PM, going WAY down to 50.68873 at 258 up after 3 wins, and then undoubtedly lying down, but probably went back to Taipei just to spend time doing SOMETHING. Talked to Spartacus on the following Tuesday from 1:45-2PM: he suggested I might be crazy to have taken alcohol while taking Cipro, to be sitting in the steam room at the gym, to be going out at all rather than just lying down to recover for the upcoming trip. He raved about an off-Broadway production of something called "The Tin Pan Alley Rag," and about French movies on IFC (which turned out not to be on anyway). Didn't even feel like bringing my journal up to date. Bed 10:40PM.
MONDAY, 7/13/09: Pee at 2:48 and 7:27 and 10:25AM, typing a dream after each pee, the last dream was really awful and I read it to Marj at 11AM so that I would be sure it was edited and understandable. She remarked that I might have even more dreams before seeing Sharon on Wednesday, and then Sharon calls to change our meeting to Tuesday at 5:30PM. I have a late breakfast and maybe do Taipei before realizing at 2:28PM that my appointment is at 2:30, not 2:45! Record everything in MEDICAL. Back for a late lunch, and then play Spider in three episodes from 6:15-10:30, ending at 50.70099 at 263 up after 3 wins. Just feel crappy, particularly when Ken calls and says I should make a car appointment TODAY for a WEEK from today. I said it was more likely that they'd FORGET such a distant appointment, rather than the risk of their not having a car available if I made the reservation on, say, Saturday or Sunday. I get to bed at 12:10AM Tuesday.
TUESDAY, 7/14/09: 1:06AM: Take ambien, but don't go to sleep until AFTER 1:50AM. Pee at 8:03AM and make a list of things I have to do today: A) CVS: 1) valerian, 2) melitonin, 3) three Rx. B) Bank: 1) deposit check, 2) get $500 cash for the trip. C) See Sharon and print dreams for her. D. Library book back. E) Gym. Up at 9AM. Try to catch up on printing NOTEBOOK and DREAMS pages. TV guys show up 1:15-1:35 and say they MIGHT have to drill a hole in the back of my cabinet in the living room to get to the TV plate on the wall about two feet above the floor. Management calls back to say that, in fact, that will have to be done on Friday. Get out at 5PM and do everything on the list by 6:50PM, laying down at 6:53 but getting up at 7:35, forgetting to see the beginning or end of some French film about schoolboys during WWII willingly or unwillingly protecting Jews from the Nazis. Watch "The Furies" sometime during the day for the movie and start the commentary, leaving the end of it for tomorrow. Do Spider 7:35-9:40, ending up at 50.7112 at 267 up after 6 wins. Spray my nose for the first time after reading the elaborate instructions. Take melitonin, hoping it will help me in my sleep, and get to bed at 11:15, having an excellent Actualism session with the fantasy that the melitonin will solve my sleep problems and that life will be getting better, but unfortunately remain awake and take an ambien at 12:10AM to GET to sleep at last.
SHARON B. 104 7/14/09
Start by saying that the last two weeks have been a total disaster; the only benefit was that I now know I CAN exist through such a total disaster and look forward to coming out the other side. Summarized the FINAL conditions for her: was diagnosed with an Upper Respiratory Infection, resulting in a post-nasal drip that caused the cough and chest congestion; because I had taken a Cipro before seeing Dr. Okoh, he prescribed a FULL regimen of the antibiotic for ten days, which ended up not affecting the infection but giving me a rather severe case of nausea, which I hoped would stop when I finished the 17th Cipro early Saturday morning. However, I thought I was still detecting the odor of Cipro in my urine even as late as today. I felt much better (she said I sounded better than I had when I last saw her two weeks ago), felt relieved that the doctor told me on Monday that I could certainly take the trip, and would get a complete exam from Dr. Chin, when he got back from his vacation after I got back from MY vacation, on September 1. Dr. Okoh prescribed fluticasone propionate (generic of Flonase) spray once a day for my nasal drip and clotrimazole-betamethasone for my jock itch, also prescribing a chest and SINUS (which I'd never had before) x-ray. I mentioned that I managed to get out to dinners and ballets, but it felt a strain, and I was concerned about my energy level for the trip, which she said was reasonable. Then I brought out the printed dream pages, which I read to her in order, and she asked when I had last felt anything in real life like the terror I felt in the last dream. I thought and said that in REAL life I NEVER felt anything like that. Oh, yes, in my younger days I might be climbing a mountain and slip a bit and feel a bit of panic, but never such a concentration of hopeless terror: only in dreams. I remarked that even the dream before the trio I brought to her referenced my mother, who was clearly on my mind, partly due to Sharon's insistence that I remind myself how she was with me and how I was with her. Also mentioned Marj's echoing Sharon's admonitions to not think in terms of "should" and to do what I felt like doing. Then I brought up the added sessions in her billing, and she explained that she made sure not to bill for services when I was out of the country, so that meant she'd double up on billing when I was here; she was also glad I brought it up, rather than stewing about it in silence. When asked how I'd treat like matters with others, I said that I'd SURELY bring up something like this with someone CLOSE, where the relationship MEANT something, and not bother with a casual acquaintance. I emphasized how well she was doing, and how Marj thought she was doing a good job, and I thought she was doing a good job, and she smiled and said she appreciated that. At the end she wished me a good trip, and said to say hello to Marj, which surprised Marj. The next time I see Sharon is on Wednesday, August 12.