DIARY 8681
6/18/74
PARTY AT DAVID S.
He's name dropping all over the place, and reviews of his are prominently displayed on tabletops, but Charles Ludlam is SUCH an unpleasantly hog-nosed, black-greasy-balding haired, hard-eyed, snide-humored person that I AGAIN swear I don't see his "Camille" and someone who saw it said it was rather a sarcastic kind of humor. But some of his hangers-on were pretty, and then Matt B. started putting on his shows of monologues when he was stoned, and there were a group of women who entered who really seemed like predators, from the tomato-red gowned double Scorpio who looked like she lived on raw balls to the bleached-blond Spanish type who once linked arms with me and asked if I was AFRAID of her. I laughed and said no, but I can vividly remember the idea that she was rather determined to "have" me, saying that Sagittarius always ADORES to go after Aries. Wish more pleasant people were Sagittarius. Fred enters with a LOVELY pixie-faced blond Steve who's Libra and who won't make trouble for anyone, and I'd LOVE him to go to bed with me without making any trouble. There were other taller darker dolls who seemed to be there with lovers, and two small boys who looked beautiful together obviously lived and loved together. Wind my way up to the bathroom along the stairway lined with various styles of Madonna-and-Childs, reflected in stained glass on a wrought iron room divider and in porcelain and wood statuettes all around. Enjoyed the garden (before the rains came) with its ivy center, chairs scattered around, and strange elongated passageways to other sections of the rambling apartment house right next to the church. Great place, though the people who lived in the back were dreadfully unhappy: "But you'll NEVERNEVERNEVER get a divorce from ME." Lots of joints passing around, drinking white wine, eating cheese and candies that had been run over by a truck, and ham and cauliflower and chips and dips, listening to THEIR Moodys records, talked to SOME new people, but obviously no one was interested in going to bed with me, so I got quieter and quieter, shook hands with David, THINK I said goodnight to Paul (but I probably didn't), and left alone at 11:15, knowing there was nothing more there for me (though I'd be chagrined to find it turned into a SUPER orgy afterward). Reproduction of the Caneto sketch John says is of HIM.
DIARY 8692
6/22/74
TALK ON PROMENADE WITH ROLF
I went such varied topics as the Uruboros-water surface ultimate process of the reality of the universe as directed by John Wheeler's "Geometrodynamics" and the Seth material, which Rolf remained skeptical of, saying that there were well documented case histories of people writing with double personalities. I talked about the changes I'd been through since LSD, saying that much more frequently NOW I felt that I was transcendently happy, and it MIGHT be true, but I felt that I was making up a story. He went into loads of things: his scenario that the Dow-Jones will rise to 3500 within the next three years, mainly because the BASIC goods sector (gas, concrete, gypsum, steel) had done so little new construction in the past because of the choice between getting a 4% return on their investment of building a new plant or a 25% return of buying back their own stocks which had hit new lows of a 4 for Price/Earnings ratio. He said the capital went back to the shareholders, who kept it in other stocks, and that this capital WAS available to come back into the market as investments for new buildings when the price of whatever rose from $1.05 per pound for a 5% profit to $1.25 per pound for a 25% profit, since the production facilities were actually able to make it CHEAPER to offset the rising labor and raw materials costs---mentioning the shipping of CONCRETE up in huge barges from Mexico. He talked about the "Warranties of REITS," saying that I should borrow money to buy a Call on a Warranty in the Real-Estate Investor's Trust organization that sold stock based on the mortgages they hold on buildings in which the residents will pay rent that will pay the mortgage which will increase the value of the stock which will increase the value of the warranties which will come up to the call value and enable me to pay my loan and make about 2000% profit! He talked about his 22 years in a voluntary mental hospital and the 9 years of psychoanalysis that ended 3 years ago, during which time he perfected his "line of type" method of composition in which he could dictate paragraph-perfect prose from type that appeared so distinctly in his mind he could see whether it had serifs or not. He didn't want to get into his "psychic control" capabilities at this time, but I said he'd have to talk about it later. WILD!
DIARY 8746
7/13/74
BOB R.'S OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE
He calls me early with his somber deeper voice when he's got something on his mind, and he says he was making it with a guy last night that he had a good scene with a few weeks ago, and he COULDN'T FEEL HIS BODY (which I think is the more important part of it), and later he seemed to see that "he" was floating a few inches away from his body, with an area of glowing white gas or light between "him" and his body. He said something about being "out of synch," and I immediately thought that he could be reacting to actions long AFTER they were finished, and when he denied that, he said something else that made me describe the Seth "body isn't there all the time, it blinks on and off like a motion-picture image" and I gave him the idea that he may have been blinking in TWO places so fast that BOTH looked continuous, whereas in fact there was no actual COMMUNICATION between his body that was being bent in certain angles (he seemed reluctant to say what they were doing, so I sort of assumed someone was fucking someone), but that he wasn't stimulated by it, he couldn't get an erection, and it became the sort of mechanical operation of him reminding his body what he did two weeks ago, and taking care not to get into anything new, he sort of tutored his body through the experience so that the other fellow wouldn't get the idea something was wrong. He said he was very worried about it, because he wasn't sure how far he would go or if he would ever get back (he said he went out about 8:30, and came back about 12 riding home in the cab, when he first felt the wind in his face from the open window). I said that it was very unusual for these things to happen (he was stoned, too) a few times in a row, and was he looking forward to another experience like that? He misinterpreted that to mean he should have one with me tonight, I think, because he said something about it being too soon, and he has to live with it for awhile before he tries it again. I still take lots of what he says with a bit of skepticism, thinking---KNOWING how much he loves to exaggerate his stonedness and the strange things that happen to him, but I'd sort of like to hear him report it AS he's experiencing it with me!
DIARY 8768
7/18/74
TALK WITH POPE HILL
He'd had a cat for a week, and that took everything out of him emotionally so that he didn't have time to work on my charts, but he kept talking about how interesting they were. He talked about someone (Noel?) Tyl, who was also an opera singer, who'd written such a good book about ESP that he decided to write a letter to him, and when Tyl was in Boston, he'd called Pope and found they had a lot in common: both were 6'6", and someone in the post office thought POPE was Tyl, a few days later, and both agreed that the other had had incredible experiences with ESP. I felt Pope coming in and out of nearness to me while he was speaking, and then HE suggested the feeling that he felt that he was dialing in a radio to get what he was saying, but that he'd been feeling very tired today, and much of what he said was just mere rote for filling in spaces with experience. Then Bob R. called this morning and said that he'd seen the Ouija Board at Arnie's last night when he met Arnie and had sex, too, talking about his incredible blue eyes!, and said he was cuddly and affectionate like a rabbit, and I said his nose was wiggling, and Bob said that's not what was wigglin'!, and that Arnie would give the board to Pope so that I could pick it up from him and introduce Bob to him, too. Bob then astounded me by saying (reminding) me that HE was a Taurus, too, and the idea of Big Pope and Tiny Bob (and I'm sure Bob has a MUCH bigger cock than Pope) being the same sign is rather ludicrous. But I played with the sand toy that Sandy sent Pope, had lots of iced tea, and he said he'd like to try my Selectric sometime when he wants to buy a new machine, and he said he'd get around to my charts very fast, having CALLED me this morning to say that he was delayed. He helped Arnie up with some stuff, then chatted with me while Arnie fell asleep a number of times in the chair. I still wanted Pope to somehow STEER me into something spectacular, but maybe with Arnie's Ouija Board, Pope's Alphawave equipment, and Bob's interest, something will be getting off the ground and into the air with my actual ESP experiences, though Pope said that he KNEW both he and I THOUGHT too much about it, and that helped make it VERY difficult for anything to come through.
DIARY 8888
9/5/74
CONVERSATION WITH MARGE
Call her about Ms, she says that the article had been around for awhile, as has been a series of female-oriented erotic art, and she's sad that so much of what could be good isn't published at all in Ms.
Then she asks about the depression, and I say it'll get much worse, and she reveals that Chile has inflated 700%, that currency has been devalued 17 times in the past year, and I say the US will never get that bad, but bread will be $2 a loaf, newspapers $1, other things very high.
She believes the "haves" are actually causing the depression and the energy crisis to profit from: my suggestion is that they may see what they could do to plan for it in order to avoid it, and refrain from doing it, so their sin might, at worst, be one of omission, rather than commission.
I tell about my trip with Paul, and she asks how he can live in Bangkok with so many poor people around, and I lead to the following conclusion: before, I had been sad (as in going through Borneo) that the increasing tourism was opening up the interiors of countries so that people who had formerly been living subsistence-level lives, and had not been unhappy, now get the chance to see people who "subsist" at a far richer level than they do, and now have a chance to be discontent. Before, I thought that was bad. Now, in response to Marge's "How can that be changed? (the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots")" I can say, maybe it's a good thing that these people become aware of differences, because the only way for equalization to come about is for all the have-nots to rise in anger and take it away from the haves. She says she'd rather die than kill someone (coming after her food if she drops into the country to support herself), and I say two things: (1) that she'd be sacrificing her mentality of goodness to the other's mentality of evil, which would be morally wrong, and (2) hopefully the rich would say "I'd rather die than do without my luxuries" (as did those who jumped from windows during the Depression), and the world would be better without them.
She then got depressed and said "We didn't think about such things in the 50s," and I said "But now we have a chance to look into what we think about such things (and Wylie thought about them in science fiction books when his bomb shelter people had to kill those who wanted to take over their planned survival), and that will make us all the more rich.
She brought up slavery in the south, and I said that the thinking ones had freed their slaves before the war, and the ones who hadn't thought about it at all (letting themselves be blind to the immorality under their everyday living) were the ones who suffered. Whereas we, who do think about such things, have a better idea what's deep inside us---though we won't really know until it actually happens.
I mention that I'm into science fiction, and it now seems the perfect platform to bounce a lot of these ideas around on, as in the Tell-Manhattan story. And now I really feel the pressure to get into it, along with all the other things.
We talked about should, and I came out with the ludicrous "You should not think so much about what you should or should not do---if you're going to do it, do it; if not, not."
But both she and I laughed about the "should" in the beginning of the sentence.
She hung on so long at the end, after I'd said how much I enjoyed our talking, and finally said that she enjoyed the talk too, and she should have me over for dinner some night, and I laughed and said she certainly should. We felt warm and close to each other, feeling that we could bounce ideas off each other and help coalesce them, as in "Synthetic Man." I felt that I wanted to finish the typing, so that I could finish the articles that I had to do, so that I could finish the things that I had to do, so that I could get into more writing that I wanted to do.
And as I finish typing this, I feel relieved, completed, "dusted" in the mind, and ready to be more productive. Maybe I should just read this section when I'm tempted to only go back to reading, which I can do anytime, instead of doing something more PRODUCTIVE.
DIARY 8904
9/10/74
SMOKING WITH MICHAEL R.
As Arnie had said, the grass was moist, but Michael says that this keeps it more potent, and even the seeds glow and act like hash, I swear, and I end up putting it back in the refrigerator after we're finished with it. The music is marvelously loud and while Steven and Michael discuss various sopranos, recorded performances, and conductors, I lean back on the sofa and roll with the music, feeling the ineffable pleasure of certain cadences in the "Mefistofeles" prologue that is really the equivalent of an orgasm. I start moving my hands up and down my legs, feeling excited, and when I get them some more wine (we drank practically a half-gallon of the Gallo Rhine Garden wine among the three of us) I was very conscious of a semi-erection in my trousers, and I tried standing to seduce them, but they just said something like "Sit down before you totter," and I figured they didn't want anything. But Michael used his hands on my shoulders a couple of times, and I sort of wanted to get to him, so at one point my hand was on his leg and went down to his crotch, but he said something about "Not now," and later Arnie told me that he and Steven wouldn't do anything together. So I sort of went into a shell of music pleasure, hoping they'd get bored and leave. When I finally brought out that I had a dinner engagement with a friend, and they checked a couple of times to see when I had to leave and how long it took me to get there, they sort of cooled toward me, so I was rather sad about the afternoon except that I DID have some grass that seemed VERY good (and I was quite sure from the difficulty of keeping it lit and from the little glowing pieces of seed that it had hush chunks in it) for only $25, for which I gave him $30 and he had a $5 as change. When they were leaving, I got the definite idea that maybe Michael didn't have a place to stay and I should offer him one here, but I couldn't see doing that with someone I hardly knew, and Steven seemed to have nothing to do this evening, although Arnie later said that they HADN'T planned to stay for the rest of the night. I felt awful about it, so bad that I even wanted to call Michael the next day to apologize for my non-handling of my leaving. Then he talked of blotters of acid, and I said he should bring some of that for me the next time he came up. Maybe I'll write him a letter of apology, since I have his address.
DIARY 8941
9/18/74
DOUG O.'S STORY
He tells it to me very disconnectedly, rather like trying to follow the plot of one of the modern obscurantist detective films, but I get this as the final summation: his friend George O. has been working for an import-export company (he says) from which he takes mysterious weeklong vacations, eats lunch with friends he'd rather not talk to Doug about, and gets an associate to send off coded cablegrams, saying that it's about business. Then a year ago he's beaten and slashed very badly in his Empress Hotel room, and Doug finds him when his key is gone, his "Do Not Disturb" sign is still on the door, and the desk boy says that the boy he went up with was NOT gay. Room not ransacked, nothing seemed missing, robbery no motive. He's unconscious for a couple of weeks, recovers in a couple of months, and then comes to the states for more doctoring, introducing Doug a couple of months ago to William M., a "good friend." Doug tells George "All you have from your attack is a nasty cough," and the friend dies on September 11th with throat cancer, and Bill M., who is now "O.'s brother," calls him to have dinner at HIS place to ask more questions, and reveals that O. was employed by the CIA, and the thought of counterspies in the intricate gay underground is really astounding. I suggest if they now have an opening, I'd be glad to work with them: I love to travel, though Doug says it's mostly observing what goes on right around you and informing about that. Then when he calls at 9:00 this morning, he says they used to be lovers, it was his misunderstanding that they were brothers, he'd been fired from the CIA for mysterious reasons three years ago, was told to tell no one about it, and dinner was delightful. He said that M. was getting all sorts of information, and when Doug asked him "For a novel?" he said that might be so. And I'd thought it would make a GREAT book, and Doug and I said we'd keep in touch with each other, and I hope it's not the last I've heard about that, since Doug has been saying that more and more "mysterious" things about George, a compulsive liar, very charming, very secretive, have been explained as he brings them out to look at them. Wonder if HE'S involved now and can't talk?
DIARY 9048
11/4/74
BOB G.'S QUIRKS
I TOLD him over the phone that he just HAD to stop being so negative: like moaning about a "long-distance phone call to Brooklyn to be insulted," or that he'll see five faces he knows out of the 70 and "there won't be anyone new," and how he constantly moans about not being able to find a job, about how concerned he is about dressing with just the right "look," his concern about his hair, his constant putting down of the GH (or whatever) and his constant attendance on the people there. It stems from his grinning whenever (and only whenever) his friends in the row ahead laughed at the movie "A Very Natural Thing," that turned me off. He's always so VERY concerned about the impression he makes on others, what one "does" and "doesn't do" at any time. His constant seeing of every Broadway play and movie just to have something to talk about with his friends who have nothing BETTER to talk about---even his reading of the books that "everyone" will be reading, so that he can say he's READ them. His refusal to read the Village Voice since it's not the "right" kind of paper (though maybe it will be now that it's owned by the same people who own New York, which he thinks is "OK."), and his needing to be convinced that something like Jamie Cunningham's "Lassie Go Home" would be something fun to see---none of his friends have seen it before, so how can HE see it"? His reluctance to be part of the audience at "Boys, Boys, Boys," and his worry that I would do something in front of his FRIEND that would embarrass him. His loud denunciation of the "dirty old men" who would be watching the gay films at WSDG was not the least of his poor steps, and HIS constant willingness to say "Not on your life" or "fuck YOU" when I say something HE doesn't like, but I ABSOLUTELY bet that if I ever said anything like that to HIM, he'd explode, as he did when I said "Even your best friend finds it difficult to tell you how some of what you say hits him," and he obviously gets angry and says "Say goodbye" between clenched teeth. I try to laugh and say "Now you're mad," and he only repeats "Say goodbye," with even more menace in his voice, and defeated, I say "Goodbye," and he says "Byeee" with his phony accent and hangs up---I guess that's his way to insure that he isn't hurting my feelings.
DIARY 9100
11/26/74
BILL H. AND TODD
Something of great concern to me recently is the imminent departure of a family with which I have become intimately involved in the past year. Bob Snyder I'd mentioned before as being interested in reading Gurdjieff material. About a year ago Bob S. began coming over evenings so that we could read "All and Everything" together. That was a good experience. He started suggesting we might read over his place, but boy there was an awful lot of commotion over there: two children, his wife, and a television set that seemed constantly to be in operation. Then the situation changed to my going up for tea, and socialized a little with him and his wife. Well, the first time I went over there to have tea with him, he showed me around the house some; it was probably ten or eleven at night. He took me to all parts of the house, and there was this eight-year-old daughter, sleeping away in bed, looking very sweet, and there was his ten-year-old son, also asleep, and looking very much like an angel. For two or three or four months I enjoyed going, but I was also just as happy to get home. Then, oh, I don't know, they seemed to become a family for me, a family of which I could be a part. I simply enjoyed going over to be served tea on the couch, and to enjoy tea and perhaps cookies; catch a few snatches of TV shows, despite his wife's constant remarks about something or other. It seemed to fill some kind of need, or maybe it began to create in me a kind of need, and I began to look forward to going over there.I'd take wood, or half-gallons of ice cream, cause the kids seemed to like it, especially chocolate ice cream. They sort of adopted me and I sort of adopted them. The children seemed very much indifferent to me, very much engrossed in television 90% of the time. Even then I was relatively free of any deep involvement. Of course, I couldn't help noticing that their son was a truly handsome and beautiful child. It was certainly a great thrill to me, an ego-satisfaction, if you wish, maybe deeper than ego-satisfaction, I don't know, when Nancy told me that Todd had said, in my absence, that when he wanted to grow up he wanted to be like me. Then, you know, a certain period of time passed, and all of a sudden I found, while I was sitting on the couch, Todd had gotten up next to me, and seemed to be moving closer and closer, until he was right up against me. He seemed to kind of be---wanting to---nestle under my wing, or something like that, but I didn't put my arm around him or put my arm up on the back of the sofa or anything. I didn't give him any kind of space, or any encouragement. He and his sister went to bed bye and bye, and Bob and Nancy and I were there alone, and I said, "Look I noticed tonight that Todd seemed to want to---uh, you know, get kind of CLOSE to me, uh, the natural thing for me would be to just put my arm around him" and they said, "Well, that's perfectly all right, just go right ahead and put your arm around him if you DO like him." I said, "I really think it's Bob's place to have his arm around Todd, he's his father." They said, "Oh, no, if you like him and feel you want to put your arm around him, go ahead." I said, "Gee, that's great." So in succeeding evening I did go up, and Todd would make a point of making a place for me next to him on the couch, and he'd get up AWFULLY close and I'd put my arm around him and give him a squeeze, and he'd draw both legs up on the couch, and one leg would flop over onto my leg, and then we got to the point where we were holding hands, and he'd play with my fingers and I'd play with his fingers. I'd stroke his neck and squeeze his arm and all that sort of thing. They don't keep their house very warm in winter, as many people do, and Todd would get a quilt or blanket and throw it over his lap, and he'd throw it over me too. We'd sit there, with our laps underneath this quilt. He'd turn around so he was sort of half-reclining on the couch, his feet toward me, and he just put his legs right over on my lap. He wasn't wearing any shoes, of course, he was wearing socks, so I started squeezing one of his feet, and then the other foot, kind of massage it with one hand. All this was in the open, too, by the way, this was not under the quilt: his feet were sticking out from under the quilt. I thought this was absolutely grand. Under the quilt we'd be holding hands: he kept wriggling down. Occasionally I'd run my hand up his calf, and up his thigh---I never got as far as his crotch. You might say that it became a rather intimate form of contact that we were having. Nobody seemed to be batting an eyelash. I was just loving it. He was enjoying it too. It's as if our physical contact, our playing with each other, was going on completely aside from watching television. Sometimes when I'd arrive he'd really let out an exclamation of delight and say "Oh, Bill," and he'd come running and I'd give him a big hug, and, man alive, that sure felt AWful GOOD. Here was this handsome little boy, with a handsome body: nice narrow little hips, nice broad little square shoulders, and a nice little round ass, cute little crotch, and a beautiful face, hair, and all the other characteristics that go along with being ten years old and cute and healthy. I really felt as though this boy were reaching out to me. And Lord only knows I was extremely susceptible, or very very receptive. His father spent virtually all of his time at home, upstairs in his bedroom, reading, reading, reading, reading, READING. I don't remember seeing either of them making an affectionate gesture toward the other one. He was kind of on the periphery of the family. Bob is kind of a big boyish guy, about 37 or 38, very strong on esoteric and mystical material. His idea of the good life was to spend all of his time reading, taking off only enough time to eat and sleep. Nancy is a very dynamic, almost hyperactive person, quite tall, dark haired, 50 pounds overweight, a kind of very hard strong beauty, not a good kind of strength, kind of an "I'm determined to have what I want" type strength. There is little affection if any in her manner. She told me that even though she knew Todd was ten, she thought of him as an adult. If he did the right thing, to satisfy her, it seemed out of place to praise him. If he did something wrong, she'd jump on him as if he were an experienced person who should know better. Kim, on the other hand, is Mama's darling, and can do nothing wrong. Nancy has infantilized her; usually she has her thumb in her mouth. There's her thumb stuck right in her mouth. "That's Kim, don't give it a second thought," Nancy seemed to think about it. So Todd doesn't get any response from his mother. No warmth. But old marshmallow me, I come along and am a perfect target, a veritable sucker, for a beautiful kid. The first surprise was that he reached out for me in the first place. He, by the way, will not eat anything his mother prepared for him; his father fixes his lunch, and he makes his own breakfast and he makes his own supper. He's told his mother that he hates her. He refused to write a poem for Mother's Day. Instead he wrote a poem why there shouldn't be a Mother's Day. Nancy appears to take all this in a broad-minded way, but underneath she might be disturbed that her son is turned off toward her. She's rather domineering, dominating, cold---giantess of a woman, and how she appears to Todd, you can imagine. A tall female who's out to castrate him, or something like that. She's selfish, spoiled; she's told me she should really be a millionaire because she just loves to spend money. She spends money on things and brings them home expecting to get approval for them. She would drag out this thing and that thing that she'd just bought, trying to get my attention away from Todd, where I would have rather devoted it. She told me how once she'd had her suitcases packed, her little girl by the hand, ready to walk out on Bob, the little boy would stay with Bob. She's desperate for attention and I can understand it; she gets none from her husband. She's an adult, and she should realize that her behavior affects the behavior of others toward her. At one point I thought of the attention I had to give her as a kind of a tax I had to pay for being with Todd. In a kidding way, when she dragged out more stuff, I'd say "Oh, Nancy, please SPARE me," in a kidding way. He'd quite often pass me by as if to ignore me, and he'd never never never say goodbye to me; he'd just kiss his mother goodnight and just walk out. That went on until the beginning of nice weather. I should emphasize the fact that our close moments weren't constant at all. There were definitely those evenings when he'd sit somewhere else, but he'd be eyeing me. In that case, I'd go over and sit next to him. He might be sitting in a chair, and I'd go over and sit next to the chair on the floor. After good weather came, Todd met three boys from a family down the street, and no longer would he telephone me to ask if I were coming over that evening; he was now wrapped up in them. After all, there WAS a 33-year difference in our ages. So then I more or less completely crossed the S.s off my list. I had long since lost interest in Nancy and her constant demands for approval. Bob and I had long since lost interest in reading in Gurdjieff together. Nancy took up stamps, and I made trips over for that, and the kids would be there. Todd would then come up and stand right RIGHT next to me, so that it would be criminal not to put my arm around him, and sometimes he'd TAKE my hand and put it around his waist, and I'd put it up on his shoulder, or stroke his hair, or hold his hand, or stroke his ass, or up the back of his leg. He was, he is very permissive about where I touch him. I think I can honestly say I've touched him just about everyplace, except putting my fingers in his mouth. Sometimes he'll push my hand away---not in a violent way---sometimes he'll say (chuckle) "What's our hand doing on my leg?" And for some reason I don't mind it in the least (chuckle). He went out dump-picking with me once or twice. They'd come to the barn and leave a MESS. His enthusiasm for these other boys seemed to reach a peak and then fall off. [In March his father's contract was not renewed, so they sold the house and planned to move to his wife's place in Illinois, except that Bob started talking about leaving the family completely, since he no longer had ANYTHING in common with Nancy.] One night he was acting rather cantankerous and surly, and Nancy said "All right, you'll have to go spend the night with Bill." Well, this was the first---I don't know that I had even FANtasized about his spending a night with me. I mean, that was just too utterly preposterous for words. What parent would let her ten-year-old sexy little son spend the night with a 43-year-old bachelor? Why would she let her son spend the night with any single adult? I mean, this is the sort of thing that mothers just don't DO. There isn't any good reason for it. Usually, of course, they're threatened that their kid likes this person enough to spend the night at his house. Well, this one night she was tired and had gone to sleep in a side room, and I was carrying him around on my shoulders, getting his little crotch right up against the back of my neck, and dangling him from his feet so that he'd GIGGLE and sort of grin all over---oh, HE was supposed to be sleeping that night in the little side room where his mother was, and I said "Well, if you can't stay there tonight, I guess you'll have to come over to my house" and boy he just lit up. "Gee, CAN I?" If you can get permission, I said, I think it'd just be the greatest thing in the world. Sure enough, she said "No," firmly, flatly, and unequivocally, "No." But the thought did not leave my mind. Then, about a month later, her parents had arrived, and her sister, and her children, and the atmosphere, with their packing to leave, just seemed right for asking once more for him to spend the night with me. The idea came up between Todd and me one night when we were playing, and he went and asked, "Mother, can I stay over at Bill's tonight?" and she said "Well, go ask your father." So he said to me, "I think there's a good chance, because she said to ask my father, and he always lets me do what I want." So he went and asked his father, and he asked him if he really wanted to stay over, and he said "Yes, I do, I DO," and he said "Well, OK, I guess it's all right." Well, by golly, that little boy went to get his pajamas, he'd already taken a bath, slapped his sister across the face and she started bellowing like a stuck pig and he said, "Oh, I've kicked the bucket," what he meant was (chuckle) he'd blown it, so his mother did the scolding, poor little Kim and Todd the Troublemaker, and he said "Does this mean I can't go stay with Bill," and she said, "No, go stay with Bill if you like," so he came home with me! And I showered, and he stayed out there in the kitchen and read comic books---I showered with the door OPEN, I might add, I want to create a free, open, unhung-up atmosphere, you understand, I didn't want to hide anything from him. Of course, I'd had these fantasies about him and me showering together---well, that never transpired, but---anyway, I finished my shower and did my exercises and put on my pajamas, all very properly---I might say that all these times I was with him, I had at LEAST half an erection, if not a full erection, and if people saw it, poking the front of my pants out, well, you know, that's just the breaks, folks, cause that's the way I responded to this kid, and that's all there was to it. (Chuckle) I'd usually make some FEEBLE attempt, I'd pull my shirttail out, or get my cock so that it was sticking up instead of creating this big poke-mark halfway down my thigh, but anyway, I didn't double up or get flushed with embarrassment or anything like that. I just didn't advertise it, but surely, somebody along the line must have noticed that I had an erection or was partially sexually excited. So I put on my pajamas, and my penis kept popping out, but I made an honest effort to getting it back in, so I don't think that Todd ever saw it. The plan was that I was going to read ghost stories to him before he was going to bed. I said "You have a choice: we can sleep in a double bed together, or you can have a room all to your own, or you can sleep on a mattress on the floor next to MY bed." He chose the latter. I'd lit a couple of candles to make a ghostly atmosphere for the stories, but then I had to peepee, and he was determined to harass me. Of course, when HE goes to the bathroom he has to close all the doors, and when I go to the bathroom I leave all the doors open---so he sort of came, half followed me, and said "You're OBSCENE." (Chuckle) Here's this squirt, this adorable little boy, just hip enough to use a word like that, not realizing, perhaps, the full meaning of the word "obscene"; he was standing by the door, trying to disturb me and upset me---what did he say, "I'm going to look, I'm going to look," or something like that, so I just simply turned around, with my cock hanging out, half-hard or so, and said "All right, now you don't see my back, now you see my front." Of course, his eyes went down imMEDiately to my crotch, to see what was there, and that's all there was to it. Then he wanted to wrestle a little bit---he was in the sleeping bag already, so I scrabbled over him, and was sitting on his crotch, kind of, you know, pretending to choke him. He---there was something very often, Bob, passing between us, which was kind of a deep, inner recognition of each other---you could explain it that in previous incarnations we were brothers or sisters or husband and wife or father and daughter, or any relationship you want to concoct. There was a strong kinship that seemed to pass between us; you know, he was mine and I was his. I'm aware that I had had all of these fantasies about him, and frankly I don't think that this bond or kinship between us comes from a desire to support these fantasies, I think it was really THERE. You could see it in his eyes. Anyway, he was liking all this, but I have no idea what was going on inside his little head. But before he got into his sleeping bag he was up on MY bed, and I was up on my bed, sitting cross-legged reading ghost stores to him---Montague Rhodes James---and there were a couple of places where he apparently was VERY frightened, and catch his breath, and hop---right over---into my lap, straddling my body, pressing his crotch into my side---just in his pajamas, of course, and the way my right leg kind of came out from my body, he just slid down right there where my leg and my body came together, with his legs wrapped around me, and of course my arms wrapped around him, and him just pressed RIGHT up against me. And of course I'd stroke his back and run my hand over his rear end, and after a couple of minutes his fright would appear to subside, and he'd back off. And then he'd do it again, because he was very much afraid of the material I was reading him. We didn't go to BED until 1:30. Of course I was in no state to settle down and go to sleep; I was very very hyperexcited with this boy sleeping in my room next to my bed, and I got a flashlight and occasionally I'd look at his face, sort of in the periphery of the circle of light. And what a gorgeous sight: his hair, which is in kind of a short Prince Valiant style, kind of fluffed out around his head, on his pillow, and his face, just as clean and innocent looking and beautiful as anything you'd want to imagine. It was a very good, satisfying experience. I recall many times when he'd come crawling into my lap, backwards, and, I repeat, I always had an erection, so if he never again feels a good, stiff cock against his body, he's felt it in the last two or three months, with ME. So those times that he sat in my lap were very satisfying. The thought has occurred to me many times that if there was ever any device which could wean me, cure me of pussy-fever, it would be this kind of attention from a boy. I'm not sure I'd call it the love of a boy, because I'm not sure that he DOES love me. Anyway, whatever he feels toward me is wonderful, and I'm certainly thankful for this experience I've had with him. Anyway, the time is drawing near, Bob, when the S.s are just going to pull out of this town and move to Illinois, the 29th of July. I'll probably never see Todd S. again; I'll certainly never see him again the way he is now. But if he were to stay here, I don't honestly know that I'd want to see him grow up: I wouldn't want to see the changes. There is an identification there: His mother is a book-widow, my father died a month before my tenth birthday. MY mother was dark, heavy, strong, domineering; Todd's mother is the same way; we both have sisters. The only person that I had at this crucial period was this undertaker my mother hired, who was very insistent on my lying down with him, and him squeezing me up against his body: I was not physically attracted to him at all; and he was very insistent on taking my pants down and playing with my cock, and he was very insistent about not letting me know what he had in his drawers---I was interested in him genitally, but I had no interest whatsoever in his hands, arms, feet, legs, lips, mouth, hair, or anything; all I was interested in was that big bunch in his drawers which he displayed very flagrantly before me, but he never gave me any other satisfaction. And I trying to pull the same thing with Todd? I hope not. The idea of losing this relationship with Todd has brought me to tears three or four or five times already. At any rate I've had the satisfaction of letting him know, just as well as I know how, that I love him, and that even though I get angry with him, and reprimand him, I still think he's a wonderful kid. I wish someone had let me know that, and shown it, when I was growing up.
DIARY 9148
12/14/74
ANOTHER DIZZYING TALK WITH ROLF
I tell him about the TV taping, he says that the president of the REITS that they're still contemplating buying up had been let go "for a differences of opinion" in October, and that the merger was still taking up part of his time. Then we got into general economics, and he contended that the Congress WAS listening to their constituency, in fact THAT was why we were currently in a state of inflation and unemployment. I couldn't believe that, saying that capital surely had more influence over Congress than labor, but he said that the increased salaries have caused construction to rise so much that the lessened profits to large corporations prevented building of new factories, citing the cost of a "currently optimal" steel plant at one BILLION dollars, and concluding with the idea that, giving Wall Streeters a chance to invest in something for a sure 12% return on their investment, it would be no trouble at all raising $1 billion, and THAT quality and ability would be needed to save the culture of the United States from going under. He seemed to see only socialization as the alternative to our "working democracy" has he calls it, saying that "hybrid" governments never survive, and he won't agree that Japan has a hybrid government which isn't quite socialism and isn't quite capitalism, with lots of influence vested in huge corporations. He said that the market had undoubtedly now hit its lowest point, and described some Northern Sugar company whose stock was selling at 2 or 3 and whose profits, with the sugar being priced as it was, would be about 35 or 40 per share! He called this a "spike" phenomenon that occurred only once every 50 years, but here it was. He said that he thought there WAS danger of stagnation and disintegration if the Congress didn't start finding out how our economy held together and advanced, but he thought they'd be forced into higher taxes by the DESPERATE need for more industrial building. He laid blame at LBJ who said "You want a war, here's a war," but Congress refused to PAY for it, listening to the middle class who wanted no more taxes. He said the middle class had to be killed off; it said they could be DEMOTED to lower class, he said it had to be the middle class ATTITUDES and DESIRES, as summed up in the Village Voice, which he said was stupid, would lead to the "ant-hill of increased socialization and government control" by Congress who knew NAUGHT!
DIARY 9255
1/26/75
TALK WITH ROLF
He asks a few questions about the trip and then I ask what's new with him, and he talks about his group of friends who sit around thinking up ways of getting on unemployment (he's pissed because he signed up in March, 1973, one WEEK too early to qualify for BOTH 13-week extensions in benefits, "arbitrarily" rooking him out of about $2500, and he seems determined to get back. He talks about a Schedule 2 (or something) corporation which can be set up with a small number of owners and a small initial investment plus a large loan from the Small Business Administration which, he says, "is prepared to lose everything." They operate for about six months and then go out of business, enabling everyone on the staff to get a year of unemployment benefits at $95 a week. He says he's got lots of friends willing to "invest" $10,000 in a losing business for tax write-off purposes, if they were paid an additional $4,000 or so under the table so THAT wouldn't affect their tax returns. THEY would be happy when the thing went out of business, and all the newly unemployeds would be happy too. He mentioned VW motor reconditioning ($700 if done through VW; $375 if done by reconditioning, which means that you have to leave your car there for about a week) for about $350 in 3 hours time, by rotating engines from various cars. He figured he could do about one a day at a clear profit of $150 or $200. But he said he'd have to think about doing that kind of work. Alaska was still very much alive, and he'd read about how entrepreneurs were collapsing in Fairbanks and how everything was subject to shortages, and how he would be able to make lots of money by finding out what was short and flying down to Seattle to stock up on it and fly back to sell it for high prices. He also mentioned the visit of a friend from India who was a very well paid executive in a Remington plant where even the CHEAPEST Indian labor was so expensive because of 60 days paid holidays and other benefits, not to mention inefficiency and wastage, that it actually cost more to make a typewriter THERE than in New Jersey. But he wanted to find a good labor-intensive, metal-using product that would put lots of cheap Indians to work. And he returned to the amyl nitrite shortage and was again thinking of producing it.
DIARY 9262
1/30/75
ECONOMICS THROUGH ROLF
He describes the "buying panic" that will take place as institutions, which had gotten out of the market as it was sinking and which now have tons of cash which they really must invest, see that the market is in fact going up, and when they got OUT as the Dow Jones slid below 700, they're not getting IN as it's climbing past 660, but will get in only AFTER it surpasses 700, or maybe even 800, and then it'll hit a high of maybe 900 before sliding back AGAIN to even lower lows, maybe 550, and then they'll go through a selling panic again. He's concerned about the amount of money the government has to make for the tax rebates, and says that certain prices are "frozen" "going up:" union and workers' wages are getting higher and higher, and rather than going LOWER, FEWER of the people will work. The prices of materials have to continue to rise, too, since the labor cost of producing them is so expensive. This produces a spiral of inflation that's going to be hard to beat. He kept insisting that I should have a Swiss franc bank account---and since Kevin McDonald had told me the same thing, I'm beginning to believe. He says that when the account gets above $20,000 in Swiss francs, there's almost a negative interest, which Americans are willing to pay just in order to have some assets outside the country. so that when the country finally PUTS ON the fiscal controls about taking money out of the country (as he says they've already got the framework for, as the box on the income tax form that asks "Do you have a foreign bank account?" which everyone has to lie about and say "No"; and he sees it coming that only limited amounts of dollars will be allowed out of the country when the dollar is even harder pressed), they'll have money outside the country ALREADY to be able to live on. I say I'll not have to worry for awhile before I get to $20,000, and he starts talking about an annuity that pays me so much a month, and I have a flash of fantasy that he'll set one up for me, but that quickly goes. He talks about other business matters that quite go over my head, but I love to listen to him and like him in bed. Poor Bob says "It sounds like you're in love with him," and I berate his understanding of love, and merely say that I like being with him and LOVE having sex with his marvelous cock.
DIARY 9272
2/1/75
STRANGE FOURSOME AT ART'S
Art gives the excuse that he's packing to explain the clutter, but both Michael and Bob are entranced with all the remains from Art's souvenir-antique shop, looking at the art deco items and the cobalt (?) glass and the lamps and objets. We talk about the dance for a bit, until I mentioned that I was stoned, and immediately Art went for his joint, and three of them went around before Bob started saying no. All the while we were drinking: I started with Cynar, detoured via red Cora (good) to Amaretto, which everyone else was drinking with pleasure until they went to beer. Art started rubbing my back and knee on the sofa, and then went to start playing with BOB'S knees and legs and back and neck, and much to my surprise he didn't DO anything: neither stopped him nor encouraged him. Later, Bob said that he DID respond with knee-presses and hand-touches, but Art said he'd not realized it. Michael became very quiet, but not at all sleepy, and I wondered why he was willing to stay EXCEPT that he thought something might happen. Bob started talking about popcorn after the chocolate-covered cookies gave out, and when the peanuts entered, he SAID that he suggested he take off his sweater, but I didn't hear him and ART said "But he didn't take it off," and I fantasized they wanted to go to MY place. We talked about the good music on WQIV, his place in the country, his coming trip on the Rafaello, where everyone laughed about how much concerned he was with the problem of PACKING to go to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Ocho Rios. I thought they would leave and let Art and me have sex, but COULDN'T figure that Bob wanted to have sex with ME, and no one thought of ASKING Michael anything, since Bob said he wouldn't have liked to have started anything unless Michael wanted to join in to spread the sex around. But the joints finally gave out, everyone sat around chatting very pleasantly, until finally I felt very sleepy, knew I wouldn't stay because Art snored, and said that I was going. At that point everyone got up and left, Bob expressing his surprise that Art, "my date," was making out with HIM, but I said that SURELY he knew me better than that, and he had to admit that he did, and we sort of look forward with even MORE uncertainty to our NEXT time together!
DIARY 9281
2/5/75
ALL MY FRIENDS ARE BUSY
First Arnold went off for his twelve weeks as Cruise Director for TDI. Then Rolf went away from Friday through Wednesday (hasn't called yet) for skiing. Call Paul B. for sex, and he says that his lover has forbidden it to him. John C. at least called last night to say hello, looking for group sex. Bob R. has been more and more busy: looking for schools and houses. Arthur M. is obviously too busy with his group to call me anymore. John A.'s so busy with his Kei Takei book that I was shocked to see him/Chhau. Ron M. will be joining his lover on Royal Viking, then down to Maryland. John B. has never called me back though I've called him the last three times. Edgardo C. FINALLY send me a tiny note from my Christmas card; 1st in years. Sergio C. is too busy to take time to exchange stamps. He'll call me. Art B. is hardly ever home; don't know WHEN I'll make a bid on HIS stamps. Art O. is off on the Rafaello from the 2nd to the 11th; he's my newest. Fred C. seems to have moved out of the country (though I haven't called). Joe E. and Bob W. have moved to Florida for good, that's not so bad. Azak hardily ever calls, even though he's now broken up with his 2-year lover. Roger E. has totally dropped from sight: his visits used to be pleasant. Avi NEVER calls me for anything anymore; when I call HIM, he seems angry. Eddie said that he'd call me for a matinee of "New York Experience." He didn't. Susan McMahon has moved to Boston. She wasn't around MUCH, but she was around. Henry M. and Carl H. have "gotten too old" to have orgies anymore. REALLY. Arno S. simply never calls; though he never did in the past, anyway. Marty Sokol is even too busy to talk to Rolf about his record-company plans. Joan Sumner keeps saying she'll call when I call, but she just NEVER does. Nick Sanabria, at least, called to keep in touch and refer me to someone. Michael Sullivan accepts MY invitations to go, but he never offers ME any. Al B. and Dick K. and Mel and John B. I've had on my list to call, but I haven't at all, though I just might be getting to THAT point now! John W. never invited me to HIS place as I've invited him to MY place. Polly Brown never calls me unless I call HER to go somewhere on the town. Bob G., once a MONTH, will suggest something like the Grand Finale.
DIARY 9300
2/11/75
PAUL B. AND ROOMMATE
Paul said that he thought Jim had gone back home to Niagara Falls, where he'd found him when he was Box Office Manager at the Arts Festival up there. He's come down to NYC for a couple of weekends, but always detested it, however, he wanted to become Paul's lover so badly that he moved down here anyway and got a job. Paul since has lost his job, and there have been cracks in the relationship: he doesn't like Paul to be promiscuous---though he and Paul tried the orgy in New Jersey, he hadn't tried anything else since. He likes dancing in the bars, which Paul can't stand, so he goes out a lot, leaving Paul at home, but he DOESN'T want Paul having SEX with anyone else, so he'd refused to come over HERE for a couple of times. Then he said he was going to see friends in Massachusetts, but then he called the friends and they said he never arrived, and someone else at work said that he was talking about going back home to Niagara Falls. But just then Jim CAME IN, and Paul said he'd call me back. He called back while Bob was here yesterday, saying that he HAD been home, but his parents had told him that the job situation was so impossible they were looking for jobs for various people, but there were none to be had, so he should stay in New York. Paul had reported he was somewhat easier about NYC in the past few weeks, but he agreed when I said that it might have been due to his decision to LEAVE NYC if at all possible. But now it doesn't seem possible; the apartment is too small for them simply to become roommates: Paul doesn't want HIS waning sense of "liking" NYC to be swayed by Jim's incessant downgrading of the city and its dirt and crime and crowdedness and noise. He doesn't know anyone that he could move in with, doesn't know how he'll leave the city without having a job somewhere else, and will begin investigating Jim's acceptance of his promiscuity NOW that there's no longer any sex between them. He says he likes the kid, but is hardly going to be his instructor in liking New York, and I hang up after saying that I hope it works out as soon as possible, since the longer things like this drag out, the worse it is for everyone concerned: they might not even remain FRIENDS if they get on each other's nerves enough. He praised John's and my "maturity" in living close.
DIARY 9312
2/14/75
TALK WITH ART
He says that Lee did the pursuing in the relationship, while Art did the pursuing in sex, and I said that was the same as in John's and my relationship, too. He mentioned that Lee'd been "retained" by Rebecca Harkness for the past 15 years at $1600 a month, but had just been let go, and now he can get the feeling of REAL independence. He's much into Bio-Energetics, and I let him read "The OIs have it," and he thinks it's funny and true. He says that he'd settled into a very satisfying relationship of fucking Lee and Lee got his rocks off "that way," and I said that I'd never felt MORE than "not uncomfortable" with fucking, and that's why I couldn't get any pleasure out of trying to fuck someone, but telling of the times when "to my surprise" I found that I was fucking someone, after they raped themselves with my cock. He says that he'd never do anything he really didn't feel like doing, so I guess he's really never going to get hot about my cock. He also talked about "Equus" in a startling way: his first COMPLETE feeling of sexual satisfaction came in a vacant lot with a bunch of boys who had a dog who LICKED them off. Then he was cornered in a closet by a high school teacher who kissed his ear and went down on him. He found the ear-kissing more exciting than the cock-sucking. He talked about the delights of his life in New York, and I told him about the New York Magazine contest, and he said he might write up the part where he was a page-boy usher at the Radio City Music Hall, and through that became the "Kiss Boy" in the "Kiss Room" at the old "La Barracca" (or something) in the 50s (When was it? In the 50s---between Park and Lex. ZONK!) He said he always admired people who could write, said that Lee had been spoiled all his life and had things too easy, but that he was a better orchestrator (Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra") than he was a composer (except for the final septet in "Natalia Petrovna") and that he was a quite cold person, changing quite a bit now that he was undergoing private therapy with Lowen in Bio-Energetics, which he could never get into, and I related some of my experiences in that too. He also said that he had his grandfather's recent stamp collection, that he would sell to me so that he could put terracotta tiles into his kitchen upstate.
DIARY 9324
2/19/75
ROLF ON EUROBANKS
He talks about Eurodollars and then has to detour to explain them to me: there's no PHYSICAL form to them, but an oil company can deposit so many dollars for an oil emir and the special bank, which is outside the pall of ANY government regulations whatsoever, will keep the accounts in Eurodollars. But his friend seems to have discovered that these banks are on the verge of collapse, so various organizations such as the Ford Foundation are interested in people investigating this field to see if it's true, and Rolf's friend wrote away a plan to study the whole thing, and Rolf even says he's willing to learn Econometrics to improve his chances of being approved by Ford's Econometric-minded awarder. He says that they rely only on trust and the leverage power of cash deposited, then loaned to governments and other multinational corporations. But if a few loans go bad and a few depositors begin to withdraw, there's nothing in the world to keep the banks from folding, and carrying down all the banks of Europe in their flurry. I can't imagine that they could AFFECT so much and themselves and not be regulated at all, but it seems that this is the purpose of the studies proposed. Then he talks about renting a house in the country that could be used in an intensive amyl nitrite making and bottling process that would produce something like 10,000 bottles selling for $50,000, part of which could be stored in various safe deposit boxes (when he proves to himself that the market is that large and that it'll last that long) and then he'd be willing to call it quits. He'd gone from 1/2 bottle to five bottles to 55 bottles, and thinks his next batch will be with a 12,000 ml flask that he's willing to buy, which will produce about 125 bottles, about the maximum at this point. He's made two batches in 10 days, giving me two samples in a blind experiment, and I try to phone John Woods but forget he's unlisted. We talk about Indian cooking, that he's done nothing more about Alaska, and that only I and one other person know about him as the amyl nitrite king of Brooklyn Heights. He's had a headache from the smell, now gone, and used my idea of a vacuum cleaner as an air cleaner with great effect, for which he thanks me more than I deserved, then probably went off to Everhards, he likes it.
DIARY 9334
2/24/75
ART'S CLAUSTROPHOBIA
He said that he was about 7, living in the West 50s in an Italian neighborhood, and had always played doctor with little Faye, whose mother one day said that they should come in to say goodbye to little Faye. But she wasn't going on a vacation, her apartment had caught fire and little Faye had burned to death. So he was pushed into a crowded room with the smell of burnt flesh and wood, the oppressive smell from all the dead and dying cut flowers ("they start to die the moment they're cut"), and the press of people, and what he described as "the wax-mask face" in the casket. He couldn't stand it, went hysterical, and then fainted. Ever since, he'd be panicked at the scent of cut flowers, having troubles when he went to the tropics with night-blooming jasmine and other flowers, though the effect wasn't so bad outdoors. For a long time he had claustrophobia in ships, and his going into analysis at about 21 didn't help except gradually: he said the doctor tried to say that he felt guilty about playing doctor with the girl and was thus part of her punishment: burning to death. He said that wasn't it at all: he had to get more complicated than THAT. But he gradually grew out of it, except that he always associated the smell of amyl nitrite with the smell of his disease, since that used to be what pulled him out of his faint. He mentioned that he was resigned to not knowing when his claustrophobia and acrophobia would strike, but that didn't bother him at all, and he didn't even have to think that he would someday grow out of it, as he had. I mentioned Avi as someone who DID live in constant apprehension that something was about to happen, and Art sympathized with him. He said he couldn't remember the last time he felt uncomfortable in that, and didn't particularly care to want to think about it. "I really had a heavy childhood," he said meditatively. I felt close to him in a sensual but not a sexual way, feeling sorry for him and wanting to be near him. He always liked to be touched, but during his phobic phases his friends couldn't even caress him because he'd feel hemmed in: he'd want it but he'd hate it. He felt justifiably self-congratulatory that he'd finally managed to work it all out. But he said that he used even that pain in his work, and that it all amounted to a good thing.
DIARY 9339
2/26/75
PAULA ON GAY WOMEN
She introduces herself as a psychologist who came for a vacation from the West Coast, found a job, and is now living here. She's been trying to get in closer to Ginny V., but she says that there's a lot of suspicions about her: she telephones people, compliments them on what they're wearing, and is willing to be direct in things she says, and everyone accuses her of being masculine, manipulative, and coercive. I sympathize with her, but think that she's generally on the unpleasant side: a bit too large of face, a bit too self-assertive in the way she talks, a bit too pushy in talking to strangers---she even shakes hands in a bit too matter-of-fact way. It may go over well on the West Coast, where people seem a bit more together and less defensive than here in New York, but I can't blame her for feeling out of place. I sympathize that people can't look at someone as just a PERSON without having to excuse what they're doing, and then I find myself trotting out my Tuesday appointment with the New School for her just to "prove" to her that I'm an intellectual too, and worth talking to. She'd just been to two other benefits this afternoon, something for Liberal Women, and something else to do with NOW, but she hadn't heard of Nath R. or Marge D., both of whom I thought of as someone who ISN'T hung up with role playing as males or females or lesbians or gays or anything, but are merely interested in dealing with others as OTHERS. But I can surely see that she's having trouble meeting people, since she seems even to want to talk longer with me, but I figure she'll have to be masculine and aggressive and pushy and ask ME for MY phone number, because I'm sure not interested in volunteering mine to her. She'd probably like an intellectual relationship with me, but I baldly can't think of a single thing she'd be good for, and I'm not even super-pleased about having her sitting next to me at the table at Reno Sweeney except that she's good at sending away the waiters who keep buzzing around asking if we want anything more to drink. And it was nice to switch from the pretzels that I was eating too much of because of their great burnt taste to the blander peanuts on the tables.
DIARY 9347
3/4/75
H.-M. VIOLENCE
They were driving down Route 301, passing someone, when someone in a souped-up white Buick wanted to pass THEM, and when he DID, he pointed his finger menacingly at Carl's head, talking into a microphone as he did so, and they thought he might be an off-duty policeman talking to his station house, or a member of a gang talking to other members, or an individual sickie who was recording the event for his own later delectation. Carl spun into a U-turn onto a highway to try to get rid of him, but he followed right along, getting them at a stop light, and as Carl rolled down the window (I was too afraid not to cooperate with him; I thought he had a gun) his fist came right into his face, knocking his glasses for a loop, and he threw the car keys across the highway so they couldn't drive away. Henry said he got out of the car, taking off his glasses, convinced that he should stop hitting Carl or he'd kill him, and he really laid into Henry, knocking him onto the pavement and bruising the back of his head, and beating him so badly around his face that he couldn't see out of his left eye, and his face was a mass of blood. The guy kept beating away while they tried to talk him out of it, and all the while this 6'5" 250# guy kept mouthing obscenities (they of course thought he was a repressed gay and the sight of two men in a car set him off into madness) and beating them while they couldn't do anything to protect themselves. Cars behind were blowing their horns to get them moving, and finally a "kid in a pickup truck" got out and said "What's going on here?" "Like a click" the guy calmed down, went over to get the keys, and got back into his car, after Carl and Henry had verified his license plate. But there was no record of such a plate, and NFD didn't seem to mean fire department, and some relation of the people they were staying with was ON the police force, and he said they'd never heard of anything like this about the "crazies on the east side of the bay." Immediate service at the emergency ward got them sedated and unswollen, but they couldn't sleep, and Henry kept pulling at his bruised eye, saying that the nerve was damaged, he felt that he had a string across his eye, and that his teeth were numb and painful at the same time. They said they would really have to THINK about going down and testifying against him if they GOT him, since he'd be up to NYC then to KILL!
DIARY 9355
3/5/75
ART'S RELATIVES
Eleanor comes in practically baring her breast to show her fading Florida tan, and relates dozens of anecdotes in which someone tries to pick her up, tries to be her third lover, introduces her to friends as young and attractive, and in fact she looks somewhat better than Art, though she's older. Funny to hear her daughter condemning her for looking so good, and the daughter's blown up so much with what might be twins (the doctor thinks he hears two heartbeats, and twins DO go in the families) that she can wear her mother's pants. The fiancé had been busted for pushing and is now on Methadone, going to school to become a mechanic, and they're complaining that the father wants to invite 60 "immediates" to a dinner following the "simple" marriage in the rabbi's quarters, and they're debating going off to City Hall in a few weeks, and she laughs about carrying the bridal bouquet well in front of her to hide her pregnancy. She's lived with Joyce when she was 15, idolizing her, and falling in love with one of her boyfriends who later turned into a lousy lay. They're not allowed to smoke or drink, per Mama, but they enjoy Art's "perfect" martini that tastes awful to all the men and fine to Art and Debbie, and Art gives them some grass that Mama doesn't want them to have. George "picks" at his fingers, which makes them look like Jean-Jacques', but at least Debbie says it's not noisy, like her father's smacking of his lips when he's not drinking his quart and a half of booze a day. Father used to be a leading saxophonist in a blues band, other relatives used to own restaurants and hotels and catering services that have gone by the way, and the real "heavies" that I should meet are the mother and father, who haven't been told about Debbie's pregnancy yet. They chat about how much she hates Uncle Yuddy and Aunt Dan, but she likes others of the relatives. She hates "Billy Jack" from the Previews, but George groans that she hasn't SEEN any of the previews and how can she talk so stupidly that he's ashamed of her, and Art afterwards says maybe I can now understand why he ran away from the entire family when he was 13. I felt dizzied and amused by the bizarrerie and heartbreaking typicalness of the interfamily scratchings and bickerings and nosiness, but that's the way most people LIVE!
DIARY 9364
3/5/75
ART O.
So funny to think of how we've gone: met him on the ship and saw him afterwards, and Bob G. starts saying, "Oh, you're really having a THING with Art." Then Joyce and Gabor want to meet me to "pass judgment" on me, according to Art, and THEY think something's going. Then I chat with Paul B. about my weekends at Art's, and HE says "You've got quite a little thing going, haven't you?" And I have to admit, "Yes, there IS a little thing," but it's surely not much more than that. I enjoy being with him and his soft-spoken "pussicatness" as Carl H. put it; and he seems to feel good talking with me. I enjoy eating his food, smoking his grass, and going up to his house, and was only happy that I could take him a bottle of wine, give him a bottle of amyl nitrite, and help him move the stuff out of the garage to repay him for some of the nice times he's given me, including the theater tickets for tonight. But he doesn't satisfy me sexually, though his nice cock is fun to play with, and I doubt that my unfuckability gives him quite the charge that he'd like to get, either---and he constantly refuses to play with ME, unless he seems to get VERY excited and works me over, which might be a nice lesson for HIM on giving, as well as receiving, pleasure! And now that he's stopped snoring, it might also be possible to spend the night over at his place, as I might very well want to do on Friday, since I'm going to the New School until about 10:30, and then will have to be back there at 8 am for the Non-Fiction Writer's Course. And I'll be willing to invite him to any orgies Arnie or I have, will go with him to the Club Baths, as he wants, and enjoy driving around the thrift shops with him, and will like meeting all his famous-friend people. Pity he can't think of something to really get me onto his ships as a Tour Escort, though he'll be asking and might even do something. He's not that sexually demanding, which is pleasant, and he doesn't push with his presence---but he doesn't really communicate clearly HOW much he likes me, and wonder how long this mutual "playing it cool" will go on before the situation changes. And how it might change, I have absolutely no idea in the entire freaking world.
DIARY 9374
3/7/75
BOB G.'S EARLY CRUISING
He freaks out reading NEW YORK and MY first gay encounter, and he said he had been thinking about the first man HE'D been with just yesterday. When he was only 16 to 17 he lived with his parents in an apartment right next to a gay beach and gay rocks in Chicago, and he was a "summer faggot" in that he knew only about the park where things happened during the day, and this fellow and he made it for the first time. Either right before or right after that he'd been embarrassed when someone tried to suck his cock in a john in the same park, fearing to do it in public. "I never used my real name, of course, I was always Bob Smith or Bob Jones, since I was in the phonebook, too." He mentioned sitting on the rocks with his friend RICHARD G. and someone came up to him and said "Hello, RG," and he panicked that the other person knew HIS name, too. So for the first two or three years he only had "playing" experiences in the park, no necking, with one sucking off the other. But he never knew anyone's name "and that's why I am the way I am today," he said with a laugh that I took seriously. Then at last he met someone who invited him to his house, and they actually laid down on a BED and he knew his NAME and they NECKED for the first time. Soon after that he fucked someone for the first time, too, which made an impression on him. He still remembered the first one whose name he knew, fantasizing that the guy would talk about the "incredible closet chicken" that he met at the beach, and he had a lovely body and nice cock and balls, and he wondered where he was now, but broke into mock tears saying "He's probably 60 years old---or dead," but I got him to establish that he was probably in his mid-30s, so he could hardly be much more than 50 now. It was the first time he'd ever talked about not knowing about bars and baths when he was young, and it was only when he came home during summer vacation from college that he even went to anyone's house and met someone through someone else, not merely a chance encounter. Only when he was 22 did he start going to bars, and the impression was that he seldom went to baths, and he didn't even mention his first experience of a gay orgy.
DIARY 9388
3/11/75
TALK WITH ART ABOUT SEX
We're both totally stoned on three pipesful (as I'm now stoned with wine, waiting at 10:15 pm for Rolf to call back in 15 minutes from 10:05), and he starts talking about his relationship to someone that I think is me until he clarified that it's about him and Lee. He doesn't seem to like him very much, but seems to condemn himself because of what he knows NOW being what he should have known THEN. I say, "Are you sure you're not talking about who you are NOW being who you SHOULD have been then?" and he says that is a very good point, and he'll have to think about that. He talks about vulnerability at this point, and I ask "Vulnerability to WHAT?" and he says "Vulnerability to AREAS," and I ask "Areas of WHAT?" and he says "Areas of vulnerability." And the whole evening goes like that. At one point he asks what I think of him, and I cast about in my fudgy mind and come up with a quote from Carol House, "You're a puxx(wow)ssy cat." And he rolls back his eyes and throws up his hands (and catches them) and says "I guess I asked for it." I keep thinking he's talking about a burgeoning love affair between the two of us, which I think it's improper to talk about before it's actually COME, but he veers off, and I feel compelled to say "I just go along with things. If they're going OK, I just go along. If they're not going well, I change them, talk about them, or stop them." He starts talking about responsiveness, and I say it's about time we talked about sex, and that he doesn't seem to respond to me. Then I talked about John's interest in S/M, and he seems to be interested in the same thing, wanting to know exactly what it was about John's games that DID turn me on, and I say something about the prolonging of orgasm, which delights me. He seems to know that he's not very responsive, knows it might disturb me, but insists that he will never do anything HE doesn't want to do, but I offer the suggestion that he might KNOW someone WANTS him to do something and he may DO it (like play with my cock) JUST BECAUSE he knows it gives pleasure, but he didn't respond. I guess it was good that we talked, but he kept coming back to him and Lee just as I came back to me and John, and we agreed that this commonness in our lives is one of the big reasons for the click in our relationship.
DIARY 9416
3/13/75
ROLF AGAIN
Call Rolf to see if he or his friends might want to give Marty $20,000 for a "$35-40,000 return in two years" to record the Eve Queler production of "La Favorita" with the tenor who "got, and deserved, a twenty-minute standing ovation for one aria" and outflank the current negotiations with Angel and London to put out the record. Of the two current non-stereo recordings, the Cetra has lousy sound and the London has a lousy tenor. With Kraus and Shirley Verrett, a usual studio recording would take $150,000. But Rolf says that his FRIENDS have doubled their money since they started going back into the stock market in December, and HE has gotten a second offer for a consulting job for which he has to go down to Philly, is still thinking about the Boston offer, and has his own "cottage industry" to worry about. So he doesn't want any more financial ruminations at this point in time. But he tells me again about the Boston report that says there will only be two computer companies left in the United States in 1982: IBM and Burroughs. I express amazement that CDC won't be one of them, but he reports that the supercomputer business has been embracing a smaller and smaller percent of the computer business, and CDC's 6600 was removed from some Swiss bank recently because it doesn't have PARITY CHECK, and there was too much of a chance of it making catastrophic financial errors! So CDC (and SBC along with it) is going into the servicing, maintenance, and schooling FOR computers and timesharing systems, but not the mainframe business. AND that if the Justice Department breaks up IBM, they will play into the hands of the Japanese, who plan to take over the computer business of the world in 20 years, thereby losing $20 BILLION in foreign trade monies---but that the Justice Department wouldn't be affected by this. "They probably have been told, but they're going according to their ideals. And all the while the world is getting shittier and shittier." As they play into the hands of the people who HAVE no ideals except making money, and the United States goes lower and lower in the estimation of the world and even their own people. So he's coming over to give me the LSD book, which he doesn't want in his apartment---preparing for a raid on his "Cottage Industry" of amyl nitrite?
DIARY 9483
4/5/75
FOREIGN FRIENDS
But first, another thought: UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES PRODUCE UNUSUAL WRITING for DIARY 9496. I keep thinking of Paul M. as "my hope" in Tokyo in particular and Southeast Asia in general. Then there are friends in London, Paris, Milan, Mestre-Venezia, Florida, Maine, Boston, Atlanta, Christchurch, San Francisco, Cracow, Offenbach Germany, and Ohio: all of whom I think of as "contacts" in case New York---or the United States, or even the Northern Hemisphere becomes uncomfortable from the point of view of expense, noise, economic disaster, political catastrophes, or nuclear warfare or terrestrial upheavals. John said it was part of "me" that I kept track of these friends, but now I look at them (aside from the fact that I DO enjoy them) as some sort of insurance policy (much like the Swiss bank account I'll be waiting to hear from Rolf about) in case my life here and now becomes untenable. Do I feel like I'm using them? Yes, but possibly in the same way that they use ME: as a place to stay when they come to a specific place, a source of information about living conditions in that place, knowing that I know them well enough to be able to evaluate their opinions about the place from the point of view "Would I like to live there?" They may do the same for me. There's a kind of stability built in: Paul and Boguslaw and Bill and Doug and Edgardo and Franco and Edward and Jean-Jacques and John P. are all so much more STABLE than I am: if I go off some sort of deep end and have to run somewhere for succor due to PERSONAL enormous goofs in the area of me-first, job-later, there are lots of places left to run. Even New York friends are going places: Marty into the record business, Rolf into consulting, Bill into Gurdjieff, Bob G. eventually into SOMETHING, Norma into the upper reaches of salary-levels---possibly THEY might be willing to help me out with advice, financial assistance, or even a place to stay if I totally freak out and need shelter. Strange direction for my thoughts to be taking, but there it is. Should I ask the question AM I GOING MAD? on DIARY 9497? But it's nice to know they're there; they seem to like me; I feel good about them, and it's surely worth the effort to keep up with them.
DIARY 9484
4/5/75
CAN'T TALK TO BILL
I was rather looking forward to his visit so that I could discuss my present feelings---of confusion, I must admit---about where I am and where I'm going. But then he appears looking PHYSICALLY forbidding with his Maine pallor, his increasing baldness, his baggy clothes, and his distancing habits of slurping at his food, picking at his teeth, and talking so clearly and distinctly that he gives the impression of lecturing. Then, he listens to my feelings with a superior air, as if he were looking to find chinks in my armor to pry open and say "See, see, you say you're so well adjusted and here you're feeling bad and depressed about this and this and THIS!" So I feel that I have to keep up sort of a false front (of course, there's the realization that he's here for only a short period of time, and that if we were to continue the conversation, it would have to be over the stultifying lapses of time involved in exchanging tapes) of well-being, and it's a pretense that I don't enjoy. But then I'm sure he gets the feeling that I'm trying to find chinks in HIS fortress of beliefs and habits, and many of the times that I interrupt him, he keeps coming out with how impatient, eager, and immature I am. But I think of this as an asset, to be cherished and in a certain way PROTECTED from him, where he thinks it part of his bounden duty to break down. Rather similar to John's analogy of going to bed with me as a sea urchin with all the spines is the analogy of my talking with Bill about my inmost feelings. So, in the same way that I'm depressed with Bob G. because he won't let me have sex with him, I'm depressed with Bill because he won't let me talk with him and show my humanity (or I won't permit myself to expose myself to him, which is the same SORT of thing with the blame reversed), and then I'm just anxious for him to leave, feel that he hampers my activities, his habits grate on my nerves so that I actually avoid eating meals with him so that I don't have to constantly avert my eyes and ears from his sputterings, full-mouthed chewings, and bodily sounds and squishes. I feel that I could talk easier on tape, but don't want to because that would just indicate I was hypocritical when he was here---as well as hyper-critical! Talking about painting myself into a corner!
DIARY 9514
4/8/75
MUST I TRIUMPH OVER BOB G.?
HE, however, insists that we take the dice-rolling test, and since it seems to be 6 chances out of 36 to roll doubles, or 1 out of 6, I increase his request for 50 rolls to 60 rolls, so that the AVERAGE number of doubles should be 10. We roll the white dice, I first, and get 5 doubles: 1, 2, 1, 4, 4. He rolls the white dice and gets 15 doubles: FANTASTIC. I get EXACTLY 50% the expected doubles, he gets EXACTLY 150% the expected number of doubles. He almost refuses to believe it, and we try again with the green dice. I roll 6, 6, 4, 2, 2 for five doubles AGAIN, and he rolls, obviously trying to control them, but STILL comes up with 12 doubles, MORE THAN TWICE MY RATE. There's actually nothing he can say except "All right, I agree, maybe I should become a professional Backgammon player, I DO get more doubles, and if you beat me, you'll have to be twice as good a player as I am." So we play the first series and we're tied at 6-6 after 4 games, and then I win an 8-game for a total of 14 (his method of counting). He's silent (and I've BEEN getting somewhat more doubles, but STILL not as many as he gets), and in the second tournament I start OFF with a whopping score of 8, and then he struggles out a 2, then a total of 4, but I win ANOTHER 8-game for a total of 16, or a grand total of 30 for the day, against his 10. He's devastatingly silent, and as I thought of the results today, I couldn't help but think that I've finally succeeded in castrating him in SOME way! He wouldn't have sex with me (so I couldn't castrate him in THAT way???), but he wants to continue the relationship on HIS terms. Did this make me so angry with him that I HAD to de-ball him in SOME way, and finally found the way by making him ADMIT his luck (and thus lack of skill, surely) in winning the backgammon games, and thereby crushing his balls so thoroughly that he's now LOSING to me? Though, actually, from the number of games played, he won 4 and I only won 5, but it was, of course, his accepting of my doubles that led him to be beaten by so many POINTS. So now I feel sorry, and a bit guilty about him, so I telephone him, but he's not home. Poor baby, but I wonder if this is what happens to ANYONE who gets involved with me? Am I my ball-eating mother all over again?
DIARY 9574
5/12/75
BOB'S INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE
A guy who looks like he might be the lead from "Grease" comes in with a gal. His white undershirt is rolled up to his shoulders, his pouf hairdo is back like in the ads, and his crotchy white pants are ripped up the center, and Bob looks over with his bug eyes and says that he's not wearing any underwear. He keeps looking, and I think it's rather silly: he's not really that cute, and I think he's gay, anyway. We move to another table (giving him the clue we're not with the two girls sitting across from us) and Bob keeps staring back at him. The rest of the audience is rather gross: two females, dykes, obviously not enjoying the show, are talking louder than he is with the microphone. Some of the jokes are very strained, though some are marvelous, and his impersonations, even the quick switches between Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead, are quite accurate; Bob and I BOTH notice that the shadows on the back, particularly for Judy Garland, are getter than HE is. There's Mae West and Jeanette Macdonald and Katherine Hepburn and Carol Channing and some others I can't remember. Anyway, Bob keeps staring at the other guy, and we leave close together, Bob staring and staring, and when we get out they're a bit ahead of us. The guy comes BACK, and says to Bob in a normal tone: "I'm going home now, but you can call. I'm in the Manhattan book under Waters, Richard." And he goes to his date, who is smiling. Bob is totally floored, squealing and stamping up and down and screwing up his face and squeaking "This has never HAPPENED to me before. The NERVE he has, you could have been my lover." And I write down in the back of the book "He's lousy sex," since he's so into the lousy-sex 50s, and BOB is so into the 50s, that it might be a perfect MATCH, but he's probably lousy. They meet on the following Monday, again the guy insists that he's never done this before, has a beautiful body, a big cock, they "do it" three times, watching TV in the borders, he's living with a former lover, he's very shy, very affectionate, and as I listen to him on the phone, I can feel the envy of his position and the hatred of his luck growing in me, and I'm beginning to think I should do something against the relationship before it REALLY eats me up!
DIARY 9577
5/12/75
TALK WITH ART B.
He says that DTW has seen about 75% of all the new choreographers, and a bit later asks me to name 10 choreographers, and I do, not knowing what he's wanting it for, and named 50% of those who had been trained at DTW (though my sample would be biased, since the names I KNOW I learned through John and, indirectly, through DTW). He said that he's seeing EVERYONE dealing in more highly personal, feeling, emoto-psychologico, or something that he just made up, styles. I think of Laura Dean and her extreme simplicity, and the inner "thwonk" that her dancing gives that the DESCRIPTION of her dancing (variations determined mathematically) surely DOESN'T give, and I get this idea of a continuum from emotional to mechanistic, but see, as is usual in continuums, that they JOIN in a CIRCLE at the ends, so that something that would be 101% mechanistic would be 99% EMOTIONAL, and they seem to have "broken through" (through---"through" another dimension?) the end-barrier and gone from sheer BOREDOM to something that strikes at a basic feeling that is so primitive, so gripping, so solid and HUMAN that it can't be resisted without a chill up the spine. He's also sad that he can't talk to anyone, saying that there's a feeling of intense competition between him and Jeff, though they work together perfectly as administrators. He says he can talk theory with Tina Croll (surely THEY can't be competing), but with few others. It might be that they don't KNOW anything about what they're doing, or it may be they're afraid that by talking about it they may change it, or someone may steal it, or that some artificial feeling of mystery that they think should exist must be preserved. He doesn't mention Michael at all, has no idea what his itinerary through Europe will be, and chooses to take VERY few of the things I got for him, though he has much of the stuff to start with. Was looking forward to having sex with him, somehow, and was saddened when he had to leave before 4. But he keeps saying he likes younger people, and he DID say that I was his "best friend among the people I don't see every DAY." And now I have his list of stamps, with prices (that seem to be going DOWN and not up!) that I have to make him an offer on!
DIARY 9650
6/5/75
TOBY M.
Forget about him until maybe 9, and he doesn't arrive until 9:30, bright-eyed in the morning. He's brought my stuff back, and I'd tried to locate the notes from Julian H.'s meeting, but I just can't find them. Go again through the Mattachine section of the file, then through the other sections, thinking it may have been misplaced. Check the "Personal" section of the desk file, and even the "Personal" box in the closet. Try again to trace the number of the pages through the diary, checking the calendar entries, but nothing seems to help. Feeling very frustrated, but I can only think that I threw out the notes in the same way that I KNOW I threw out the card from Julian's business just a few weeks before Toby called, saying he was coming back to get more information about H., whom he now considers a pivotal figure. As he's going out the door, thanking me, he sees my travel files and the space devoted to India, and he says that his lover RUSTY is a Parsee, whose family lives in Bombay, and he's spent two months with the families in Bombay and Bangalore! Incredible, so I ask him back in to sit and chat, and he's leaving on July 4th for two months in India, which means that he has to finish up his research and get back to Harvard fast. He looks better and better, particularly when he says that Rusty is 10 years older than he is, into the mineral business, concentrating on the zeolites that occur in cavities of lava on the Deccan plain. He didn't do much touring, though he seems to me into it now that "he's more mature," envying my great travels. He'd heard of the Koorgs, the "kooks" at the bottom of the scale of natives, but never seen them. He hadn't been to Belur or Halebid, but knows of the wine-covered feet of the Jain God at Sravanabelgola. He said that I should get in contact with him when he comes back, since he would certainly have the names of people to refer to me if I ever get to India. He and his lover are very much out with everyone's families, "owning land jointly," and he says that the Parsees are more interested in the fact that Rusty had a wife and daughter, and can't believe that they're "spouses forever," as they consider themselves to be. If Rusty has Toby's intensity, they should have no trouble staying together forever---and I'm jealous!
DIARY 9672
6/14/75
THE END OF BOB G.
He and Bob R. surely didn't like my scene in asking for a plate in the Chinese restaurant, didn't like my not liking Donna McKecknie's solo in "A Chorus Line," and surely Bob hated my berating him for liking Clive Barnes' review of "Chicago" when I was playing backgammon with him. That evening sort of coalesced "what was wrong" with our relationship: he sat over the board saying nothing while I talked with Arnold on the phone, we chatted about nothing when we played, he wasn't interested in the exhibit at Asia House, I wasn't interested in his 7 pm news or 7:30 "Behind Hollywood" program, he wasn't interested in Channel 13 or French Connection II, I wasn't interested in "The Games" and just left, and he didn't even come to the door. I'd had to hear from Arnie that he had a membership to the Continental for the summer and that he was going to Fire Island for the weekend, and SINCE then I'd heard from Arnie that he's going to Chicago this weekend. Now when someone says to call "When something happens," it seems that THIS would be something happening to HIM that he could call ME about, so I'll not be calling HIM for anything that I can predict: I really don't need his criticisms of the out-of-the-way dances that he accepts to go with me to, I don't need his tacky gay restaurants or bars, he doesn't like West 12 with me, he refused the invitation to the last few orgies I gave and never gives any of his own, hasn't invited me ANYWHERE since "Chicago," so that seems to be the end of HIS calling ME, so why should I call HIM? And it leaves me with more time to think about meeting MORE people, since I'm also seriously thinking about where Art and I are going: he just doesn't turn me on that much (or course, Bob's refusal to have sex with me is part of my reason for feeling uncomfortable with him), and he doesn't do anything with ME, and I don't even think he necks in a very exciting way. So it's another transition of friends, though I surely have to find someone NEW before I'll give up on the flattery that Art gives me by inviting, feeding, showing, giving, smoking, and entertaining me. Arnie expressed surprise the LAST time I was at Bob's---I'LL be the one to express surprise the next time I'm there. AND I'll even be surprised if he calls me after he gets back from Chicago for Father's Day!
DIARY 9673
6/14/75
CHAT WITH (?) CIEL
Sitting, now, 2:15, typing, when "the author" from the Village Voice ad calls, says he's going to be in Brooklyn tomorrow, could he come over to read anything that I may have published? So I tell him about "The River" stuff, ignore the Mattachine Times and forget about "Michael's Thing." So he'll call tomorrow. So I call Joyce to say that I won't be going up with her tonight, and she hears about the author, wishes me luck, and says that I should talk with her editor friend, Ceil (?) who happens to be right there. She comes on, says she's doing a book on criminal behavior for Time-Life, and that she'd worked with True Magazine and with agents who sent to True. She informs me of a couple of things: 1) Science fiction short stories earn so little that an agent won't handle them: not enough money for them. 2) but they WILL handle science fiction novels, since they earn more money. 3) Every author has books of short stories around, but they never get published, it's only the Heinlein or Asimov who publishes books of short stories. 4) The best place to start would be to get published in magazines, make a name for myself, get a recommendation to a good agent, and have the agent send around some things for me. She encourages me to talk to this guy, but warns me away from him if he asks for money, which I say he hasn't done yet, but I'll steer clear if he does. Told her I went the Scott Meredith route a couple of times before I realized it was very much a shill of the same kind of thing. 5) Having REWRITTEN a book, even as extensively as I may have the DISPLAY book, is NO kind of entrée into the writing that she's doing now, on contract. She'd applied for a job and gotten it as an editor at Time-Life, and then they had this job that they had to get done and offered it to her. She knows lots of agents; I mentioned Theron Raines and Sidney Porcelain, but she didn't say anything about them. But she encouraged me to keep on trying: science fiction is better read if it comes recommended: "They read more than the first couple of paragraphs, and send back a more personal letter." Obviously, they can't do this with everyone. So now I'm back onto the WRITING/PUBLISHING FIELD AGAIN. What a WHIRL it all is!
DIARY 9751
7/2/75
TALK ABOUT LOVE WITH ART
We're talking about est, and I say that I had a good cry, and what had started as irritability went into something quite different, but that I was reluctant to talk about it because it had to do with us, you and me. He asks about it, and I say that I'm unwilling to say anything because he might find it unpleasant. He sort of freezes with a fixed smile of interest on his face and says "Well, let's hear it and I'll decide." I fumble around for a bit and say that, ever since John, I've wanted very much to be in love with someone, but I hadn't found anyone to be AS MUCH IN LOVE WITH as John yet. I said that I liked him very much---in fact, that was what started me off: he said "I want to hear; we're friends and I want to know about you." I leaped at the "friends," and said "That's just it, we're friends, but we're not LOVERS," and that's what was so clear Sunday night---that I didn't have a lover, even though I wanted one very much. He asked why that was, and I gathered up my courage, sidetracked to say that this was going to sound awful, but that I thought of myself as being really someone extraordinary, and I prized myself so highly that I was always sad that no one would come up to my standards in EVERYTHING, since John, who was intelligent, interesting, very sexual, eager (at first) to learn from me, and eager to teach me what I wanted to learn from him. I said that we'd had some talks about the idea of love, and then we hadn't talked about it. That was OK, but I'd feared that he'd fallen into the "trap" that so many friends of more than a few sexual encounters did: they ended up saying wildly "I love you" when I was sure that they just liked going to bed with me. I said that I'd had more than enough of people seeing me for one day, a weekend, a week, or a month, and saying they loved me without THEIR really knowing what love WAS. I said that before John, I was afraid that I might NEVER fall in love, but with John I found out EXACTLY what it was, and it was a lovely state; I'd like to be there right now. We started talking about the difference between being friends and being lovers, but it didn't go very far. I also went into the LSD thing of the glass of water, Peter's offering me coffee, and I said "Though this may surprise you, I have difficulty accepting things from people," and when we got into it, I said that I feared that people were "paying me off" for my company, and he didn't have anything to say about that. He said that he still didn't feel like having an affair after his long thing with Lee, and that in fact he thought he'd never be willing to get into anything again. But HE thought of himself as pretty extraordinary, too (actually, I said that first, and he agreed), and so it was a good relationship---I was just hoping that he wasn't falsifying things in the relationship, which he of course insisted that he'd never do. He wasn't that kind of person, he insisted. So we ended up feeling pretty good about each other, had dinner, and then I was tired about 2 and wanted to go to bed, but he left the light on and then lay atop the sheet talking to me. Then the lights went out and he was so importunate that I finally sucked him off, holding onto him at the end, and he throatily said, "You know, though I DO love you just as much as I do my sisters and other very close friends; I care about you and want what's good for you." I said that I couldn't say that, and that there should be more words for things like this---or else I was being overly analytical: I felt silly calling him a "very good friend," because that was SO different from "a friend." But I couldn't call him a "lover," since the only real lover I had was John. He asked again what the difference was, and I came around to the idea of threats to the relationship: that I saw John (Connolly) about once a year, and that threatened John. Then I saw Arthur (Mitchell) about once a month, we tried a threesome, neither liked the other, and then the thing with Arthur died out and John began to BELIEVE that I wouldn't be affected by these "quickies" that might go on for years. I said that Edgardo MIGHT have posed a threat, but we all knew he was going back to Italy, so I had a very intense WEEK with him, but it was no real threat to the relationship. John, on the other hand, would go to bed with someone maybe three times a week, but it would be the VERY unusual person that he'd go to bed with more than three times: that was just the way it was; whereas I'd go to bed maybe once a week, but it would usually be with someone that I'd known before. And that wasn't something that HE could understand. I said that, in a very great way, I might even love Bob G. more than Art, since it has something to do with the OTHER person's style, too: I knew that ART was VERY independent, VERY capable of taking care of himself (witness his almost spontaneous cure of his injuries from falling into the Hudson off the pier), while Bob was capable of making himself SICK (witness the Bell's palsy and the current knee disorder, which I find this noon is "OK" but they can't find what causes it, and if it doesn't go away, they'll just have to make more tests). I said that I had no idea where our relationship could GO (he said a couple of times that there were really LOTS of things that we didn't know about each other yet), and that it was open, as he said it was. But when he finally DID say "I DO love you just as much as I love my sisters," I DID get the sinking feeling that it was the same sort of thing again, but I felt that NOT loving in RETURN gave me the opportunity to still be "on the lookout for something better," though of course that was still the case while I was with John. However, I SAID that I figured I wouldn't be with John forever, while he said he didn't think about it, but assumed that he and Lee WOULD go on forever. But while I was WITH John I never really SOUGHT for someone to replace him, but now I'm SEEKING to replace the feeling I had for John, and it's not with Art. In fact, POPE even said that there wasn't anything startling in what I'D said in my est notes for the first two days, and that he felt the same things himself, by which I guess he meant that he never found anyone worthy of HIS love, though he wanted very much to be in love with someone, though he kept saying "at my age," leading me to think he really doesn't EXPECT to find it, while I DO. I keep harking back to Dennis D.'s prediction from my palm that I would find "the great lover" when I was 40 years old. Wow, only 9 months to wait, do I figure that est is the CONCEIVER of this love, and of course I immediately think of Bonneau or Earl (crossing, sadly, straight Jeffrey off) or Ivan or Ken. But I felt good to HAVE the talk, and I suspect we'll be having MORE talks on the subject, but at least I don't feel that we've been AVOIDING it, and that he "loves me" and "really doesn't love me" is good: I can take what I want and leave what I don't, and I think Art feels better about it, too.
DIARY 9761
7/4/75
BOB G. AS A DOWNER
I ask if he's seen anyplace in which to eat coming up, and he doesn't seem to know what I'm asking, then says that the Szechuan place is right across the street, since he doesn't want to walk with his foot. Then we're in, sit at the window, and he warns me about the knee that can't be bent, saying that I should move in, and then puts his umbrella there. Then he hits me with the fact that I HAD agreed that it would be a good idea to see the closing performance of Bette Midler, and he said he'd GOTTEN tickets for it, but that I'd gone earlier with Eddie. I said that I didn't KNOW that he had the tickets, and that he should never do that again, and he doesn't seem to understand, and we're getting angry at each other again, and I don't see WHY I called him (except to find out why he wasn't calling me, and THIS obviously had something to do with it, too). Then I urge him to hurry, and he pokes and pokes, and finally we're out about 8, and up in the elevator to find the place ALMOST crowded, and he sits quickly in a SINGLE chair at the back of his section, so I have to sit elsewhere. Kei's thing is very nice (see DIARY 9762), but I look at him and he's resting his head in his hands, staring at the ceiling, and when it's over he goes out to the HALL very quickly (it surely IS hot in there), and we have to take the elevator down, and he says something like "I'll never learn, why is it that I NEVER learn?" So he didn't like it. Marcia flees past, and we walk down to the street, and he's going toward Astor Place, and I ask him to come down to get a movie schedule with me, but he's not interested in that, but drops the "hint" that the black guy from "Chorus Line" is doing a show at Gypsy's, and of course I'm not interested in seeing it. He doesn't know WHAT to do at 9:30, because it's too EARLY yet to do anything, and then he just wanders off to his subway stop, saying NOT EVEN goodbye, and I say goodbye and wonder if I'll EVER see him again. He always feels like such a WEIGHT around my neck, so terribly NEGATIVE (the food: he didn't want the shrimp, let's get some beef, the ribs look too fat, and THEN he says "They sure are eating a lot of RIBS," and doesn't really say ANYTHING good about the food, even if he DOES like it), that I'm just GLAD when I'm finally RID of him.
DIARY 9882
7/30/75
BOB R.'S PROBLEMS
The guy downstairs now admits to jerking off over Bob, spraying over his bathrobe so he has to wash it (at 52, yet!), and Bob hasn't had ANYTHING for the summer and is looking forward to this. He's increasingly pressured with Nina, is even thinking about a divorce, is tired of leading a double life, but is POSITIVELY CERTAIN that Nina, because of her size, is very delicately balanced about having "everything she wants" and that a husband who's gay is NOT part of what she wants: it would destroy her, he says. I suggest I could tell her about US, but he says she'd never believe me, it would have to come from HIM. The knowledge that his gayness hadn't broken up the marriage in the PAST 15 years doesn't seem to matter to her OR to him. I get the flash that they should take est TOGETHER, so that if she has questions about homosexuality, at least she won't have questions about the movement that led him to the position to want to be honest with her about his past life and his need for future freedom. Alicia is one of the centers of his life: he has photos of her "making like Esther Williams" and looking quite like Tatum O'Neal even though she's only 6, and she's really pushing a bit too hard, Bob telling about how disappointed she's going to be about not being able to play on the streets and parks of New York alone as she does on Fire Island. And it only took her three rolls of film to learn how NOT to cut the heads off people SHE takes pictures of. He says Nina's working on the house and the car that every Jewish woman should have her husband have, she's making more money than ever, but HE needs more of what HE wants. His job's becoming a bore and he'll want to change to another with an even HIGHER salary, keeping the upward trend. He figures he WILL go to est, since every jolt he's made coincided with a jolt in biofeedback, something else he was into, and something else. This is his next area of growth, he seems to think. I hope that he's misjudged Nina's frozenness, but he surely knows her better than he does: she doesn't even get nicely high on grass, is much in control, sensitive about her height, and thinks of him as almost perfect as a husband. Pity it should be destroyed ever.
DIARY 10019
9/18/75
PAUL AND JIM
Paul says how awful it was when he took Jim up to his "family" when Jim got hepatitis just after Paul had moved up to Buffalo in April for his stint with the Artpark box office. I forget WHICH family it was: mother with stepfather or father with stepmother, with the whole passel of kids and him having to sleep in the living room, and a younger brother who made such a face that Paul said he DEMANDED respect and NO ONE was going to laugh at him behind his back without getting blasted. Then he said that Jim had found a job, but that they both missed each other very much. Paul is about 38 and Jim 22, but they INSIST (at least to me) that they both love each other very much, and when he asks me if I think he's impractical when he says he'd love for Jim to move back into his apartment, I say "NO, not if you LOVE each other," and he said that to have put up with all they put up with in the past year and still feel that they loved each other, it MUST be love. I brought up their age difference, and they said they'd talked about it, and that was OK too. Jim still wanted to be faithful when they were together (Paul was SO proud when Jim told him that he turned down a cute trick because his lover was coming up this weekend), and Paul seemed even to be willing to come off his promiscuous "street faggot" stance if Jim really wanted him to: "It occurred to me that it was HE who had to make all the changes: come from Buffalo, move into MY apartment, meet MY friends, and change to MY lifestyle, while I wasn't doing any changing at all." So now he might be more willing. He still feels that he can't turn down the money of the job at Artpark (unless until he can get into the union), so he'll probably be going up, maybe as early as January, but he has nothing but bad to say about Buffalo: all the good gays leave, it's like hell on earth; those that stay become SCREAMING faggots just to say that they're free, and the town is so small that if anyone HIRES them, the company will start getting hate calls and they'll boycott whatever hires gays, so there's no chance of anything changing. But he'll still go up for the money, though maybe he wouldn't stay as LONG at a stretch as he's done in the past. But he's still debating whether he's doing the right thing.