DIARY 10039
9/19/75
CONVERSATION WITH TOM
He's amazed that I'd spend so much time volunteering for this organization, and seems to worry that I'm deluding myself. I try to make it clear that we ALL delude ourselves at a certain level, finally getting him to admit that he'll agree with ONE part of his mind with the scientists who say that all material is really 99% void, yet trust the table to hold up his elbow. He believes it because scientists, whom he trusts, have agreed on it. I come up with a class of people called Gronches who have ALSO agreed on what's so at a MORE basic level: that everyone is god, that everything is delusion, that all is one that we create. When he sort of gets this, I say that when I used the term Gronches I really wanted to use the term Gurus, which he would probably cavil at, but that the people I'm TALKING about that say the same thing are Christ and Buddha and Lao-Tse and Confucius and Mohammed and Krishnamurti, and I believe THEM as well as the scientists. He says that scientists can be wrong, and I say not in that DIRECTION: they can say that the 1% of matter that they THINK is solid is really void, as the quark-theorists seem to be saying, but they surely can't change their minds and agree that the atom, formerly proved void, is now SOLID. Then he gets into "Why do you talk to ME?" and I say that there are FEW people I can talk intelligently to, and he gives me a TOTALLY different point of view to bounce off of. Anyway, I like you, I say, and he changes the subject. Then he suggests I FORGET about (1) The Between Years and (2) John and anything ELSE that's like a journal, and he suggests I work on a series of articles about est! So that's THREE things that three different people have suggested I work on, though they all seem to agree that "Acid House" has had it. Then he suggests that I drop out to see him and his lover in Staten Island, giving me a detailed map as to how to get there, and saying that he'd love to see me there and for me to meet his roommate. Sex a trois? He seems just as stoned after two (no, four) glasses of wine as after three Manhattans, so he's pleased with lunch, though the hamburger seems so small that I'm quite hungry afterwards---just can't get enough in restaurants.
DIARY 10160
10/24/75
BOB G. SUMMARY
The fact that he's now involved with his new friend "Jay" and doesn't call me (though he talks to Arnie and is invited to dinner there), saying that he's "not even bored with having sex with him: he still turns me on!" after about five times, leads me to wonder how many times WE had sex, and I go back to the many pages, having to get out about five different volumes, which implies that the sorting is not as good as it could have been, to come up with the summary that I took down, and since I took it down, I have to have it here, so here it is. We met at the Tsi-Dun of 11/2/73 (which means that in just nine days we'll have our second ANNIVERSARY!), when I made the first move and he finally accepted me and then we had fun together under a table, both coming twice. I went to his place the next night, 11/3, and we had sex again, long time and neat, and then jerked ourselves off together in the shower afterward: so that's four orgasms in just 24 hours! Then met again at the Tsi-Dun of 2/6/74 and 3/2/74, and each time we both came with each other, and one of these times HE even came up to ME to have sex. Then I went back to his place on 3/8/74 and we each came once, but things weren't quite so perfect: I attributing his not being hard with me to HIM and not on his reactions to ME. Then on 3/14/74 Bob R. and I saw "Zardoz" (which was the reason I saw him on 3/8, when I saw it with Bob G) and then went up for a threesome in which everyone came, but neither of the Bobs seemed to be taken with the other Bob. Then I went to his place on 55th on 4/12/75, and because we didn't have any poppers or Baby Magic, and because the mirror wasn't in a very good place (behind his bathroom door) we didn't have a very easy time of coming, and I thought things were going temporarily poorly, but he was busy deciding that things were PERMANENTLY poorly in sex, so on 6/20/74 he gave me the "Sisters, no sex," bit, and that's what we've had for the past year and a half. Oh, at ONE time there was an orgy here I was surprised to see that he reached for me and I sucked on him for a bit, but that was only in passing: he'll accept invitations to orgies with me if there will be a lot of nice people there, and he LIKED my hosting on 10/16/75, so he may come NEXT time, too. So that's 7 times (3 Tsi-Duns, 3 in his old, 1 in his new apartment) for a total of 9 comes each, which is probably one of his LARGER records!
DIARY 10215
11/8/75
LARRY B. OVER THE EDGE
His harsh loud voice is more grating than ever, and when I meet him in his green Cougar his laugh almost makes me leave: humorless, hard, grating strings of HAHAHAHA ripped from his throat. HE'S wearing a white overcoat, saying he'd not worn his Russian lamb cap, but should have, and the will from his mother's death 14 months ago still hasn't been through the courts, even though there's no contesting: he gets the house, Shari gets the money, which comes out precisely 50-50. Into his enormous living room and he turns on SOME sort of music too loudly, demonstrates how he can pick up his poodle by the tail, ears, whiskers, and she doesn't complain, and as it gets dimmer and we have more to drink, he gets up and dances "as the Greeks do" with a click of the heels, stylized wavings of the arms, and too-cerebral wavings of the hands in Indian-Egyptian seduction poses. He then insists that I do it, and I figure it's simpler to DO it, and waltz around the room, feeling very much on display. At one point he sits NEXT to me and SLAPS my leg, saying something about having five spare bedrooms and surely I can find ONE I'd like, except for his, but maybe arrangements could be made THERE, too. I figure he's FINALLY gotten up the courage to try to make me, but he keeps skirting around the issue: when I talk about shaving my beard, he runs his fingers around my lips and I stare at him, and he says something lamely about "How sensitive that area is." He gets up and dances again, requesting that I do it again, but I plead preoccupation with my mother. He'd called for reservations at Weathervane for "Beyond the Horizon," but as he gets closer and closer, assuming that I'm sleeping over---whether in pajamas or---"in the NOTHING, which is OK, TOO," and I can SEE him not being able to let me alone, pleading loneliness, drunkenness, or ANYTHING to be with me. At dinner, he starts nodding and closing his eyes, and he says he's been working too hard, but he might be ON something, except that when I mention grass, he says he's never HAD any, and when I say I have some with me, he REALLY gets interested. Notice an "Ah Men" catalog on his telephone table, and later in the car he says something about "You've been to bed with women, and maybe with men too, it doesn't matter to me; I've tried a couple of things myself," and at another time talks about "making four significant changes in my lifestyle" in the past couple of years, and thoughts of paying for trade, getting hustlers, going into and out of porno, certainly masturbating and fantasizing, and not really having very many FRIENDS. Surprised when he's a spokesman for the company about the energy crisis, the Alaska pipeline, and the history of Akron for the public relations department of Sohio research, and I can't imagine him talking before a group, but there it is. He's said that he was solidly in his job, preferred living in Akron to living in Cleveland, and had some people over for dinner, but then said that he'd never gone to the Weathervane because "a lonely chair was no fun." Why he should get someone to dinner and not to the theater wasn't made clear, and I didn't care to ask. HE, too, like Mom, tended to drive recklessly, telling me tales about the history of Akron while we drove over the center line and honked at other cars. When he's had too many drinks, I feared his falling asleep at the wheel, or making a lurch and grasping at me, or doing SOMETHING that we'd both be embarrassed about later, so I took my head in hands and "decided" to go home, and then he insisted that I stay, have some more to drink, select my bed with him---but then quickly switched to "That's what friends are for, to share problems with," though at the end he said "Next time maybe we'll have some time to talk about US, rather than about you and your mother," and I made a note that I probably wouldn't call him anymore. Any fantasy that I might have had about a single, rich Larry Ball went out the window, and his STRANGE ill-fitting body shirt with a silk scarp poorly tied, too-short hair, thick glasses over his horsy face, voice MUCH too loud, meeting someone on the street outside Sanginiti's "How are YOU," when she OBVIOUSLY didn't remember him, only to impress me, his FRIGHTENING laughter, his nodding and LITERALLY falling asleep at the restaurant, lead me to describe him as "schizophrenic" to Mom when I got home, and felt that without taking COMMAND of the situation, I could have ended up in a lonely situation akin to his.
DIARY 10259
11/15/75
SEX-TALK WITH BOB R.
He brings up at dinner the fact that I didn't come the last time he was here, saying that now that HE'S been through est, there's going to be a lot more made clear than there was before. I said that I'd recorded in my journal that I was glad he hadn't asked, since I was concerned about it too, but I said that I was VERY much into masturbation, and took the opportunity to describe "Throwback," with some of the commentary recorded on DIARY 10258. But I said that the evening BEFORE he'd been here, I'd had a particularly trying masturbation, saying I came three times, and that I KNEW it would harm my performance the next evening, but this time I'd planned for his coming by not having come for the previous three evenings. Then I'd mentioned pornography, which he expressed interest in seeing, and as we hugged after dinner, I led him into the bedroom, put on the records, and brought out the porno. As usual, with Rolf and with Stephen, I began to feel very self-conscious with someone else looking at my porno, wondering what they'd like and what they wouldn't like, and Bob settled into the same absorbed silence that the others did, and my fantasies of comparing notes, remarking about cocks, getting each other excited and spurting to the ceiling again didn't come to pass. I'd also mentioned something about cockrings, and got out the rubber bands, and in the course of the evening he twisted them around his cock and balls and looped it AGAIN around his cock, wincing from the pull on the cock hairs, and then they came off when they were cutting off more blood than they were holding in the cock. But he wasn't getting excited and I wasn't getting excited; he wasn't smoking grass because he was in est, and I particularly REMARKED that I was getting addicted to having grass with sex, storing up the "good feelings" only in the DRUGGED state, which he didn't understand, and then I reached for him and he reached for me and he said we should get the porno off the bed so it wouldn't get wrinkled, and then I went to put on the tape and we started necking. But I felt as if I were on stage: my music on, no grass, only poppers and bidis, which didn't do anything for him, and neither for ME at that point. After some fumbling around I said that I WOULD have some grass, but by that time I was too far gone: oriented to the music that jolted back and forth, self-conscious about talking about masturbation and my pornography, I just couldn't get it up. And then he started being concerned about it, asking what he was doing wrong; HE was thoroughly up, and I had the pleasure of getting the nonverbal message back from HIS cock that what I was doing was pleasing HIM, yet had the definite knowledge that he was NOT getting the feedback from MY cock, so all he could do was think that he was doing the wrong thing, worry about it, and maybe bring HIM down, which made me work even more frantically on HIM and keep myself more frantically down. Finally he sort of insisted that we should talk about it, and I didn't know what to say, and he said "Just finish this sentence in as many ways as you can think of it: 'I'm not getting excited because---'" Can't even think of what it WAS that the sentence said, but it boiled down in my first statements that it was too much TROUBLE to make me come, and that it took too LONG to make me come. Of course, that made it worse, since he kept playing and playing and playing with me, and I fantasized that his arms were falling off in fatigue but that he was gritting his teeth and any minute HE would go down. Worse and worse. Then I shut off the music, and began thinking of all kinds of REASONS why I wasn't coming: thoughts like "I haven't been feeling too well and maybe have some venereal disease and don't want to give it to you" were dismissed as being TOO ludicrous. I DID come up with the thought, that I shared with difficulty, that I used MY orgasm as sort of a BLACKMAIL to get the OTHER person's orgasms---one when they came FIRST, and then a second as they tried to get ME to come and they came first AGAIN. But that sounded very stupid and he didn't respond to it. I went through the statements that I knew I was getting the best of him, and I was particularly regretting that HE wasn't getting the best of ME, but that didn't go over so well, either. Then I said that I might not want to come because then HE could come, and I so much enjoyed watching HIM get so hard and so excited, and there seemed to be a touch of the truth in that: I DID so enjoy watching him thrash about, put his hand down to stop me, tease him to the brink and bring him down, and then I DID say that I didn't like to come together, because that took away part of the pleasure from the other person's orgasm. But, in the back of my mind, I knew how much someone ELSE'S near-orgasm excited ME, and had to assume that MY near-orgasm would excite HIM even more---but now, tentatively, it seems to me to be tied into the area of CONTROL: if I get overly excited, I can't time HIS approach to orgasm with such delicacy, and I want to remain in control, so I CAN'T "give myself up" to the pleasure so that I can KEEP CONTROL OF HIS pleasure. To a certain extent I DON'T EVER want him to come, want him to just go on and on getting more and more excited---maybe even bringing HIM to the peak of self-awareness that comes to BB! So THAT certainly would put MY coming TOTALLY out of the picture! In a way it's a measure of my selfishness: I want to totally enjoy the other person, and I know that MY pleasure (which I can have myself anytime) would only detract from my enjoyment of HIS pleasure, so I'm more than willing to "give that up" to enjoy the other person. Toward the end, Bob was saying that it might be partly HIS problem too, and I agreed with him to an extent, but still felt guilty about it. But maybe I could get him to agree that HIS orgasm is more felt when he doesn't have to worry about MY orgasm at the same time! ALSO, somewhere in there, there was the ripping idea of letting the come fly ALL OVER the place, in TOTAL abandon, sort of a kick in the ass of neatness and orderliness by letting the come fly ANYWHERE---total control of the orgasm even HEIGHTENED by the total LACK of control of where the semen lands! But still, I wished I could just "bliss out" and enjoy an orgasm AS IF I WERE ALONE (that's surely a clue?). Also, I had the feeling that Bob was TOO CLOSE to me to "cheat" as I'd cheated other friends: getting them to come and not worrying about my coming, or even coming after they leave---too VALUABLE a person to give short shrift like this---and could I be SHY about revealing how MUCH I enjoy an orgasm?? No, in the past it's been MARVELOUS with Bob, and in fact HIS orgasm that evening was exceptional. He finally resigned himself to the idea that I wasn't going to come, and I kept playing with his cock that formed a hard hook in my mouth as I worked on it with my two hands, tongue, lips, and mouth, ramming it all the way down my throat. Then, just as he got to the point of inevitability for about the fifth time, he glanced down at me, but I smiled and continued, and then he began to roll his eyes back and wave his arms, mouth too choked up to say anything, and he threw his head back as his cock grew hardest and I could feel the cream spurt out, again and again, after a LONG time of maximum hardness with no outlet, and he fell off his elbows back onto the pillow and groaned loudly again and again and again as the motion continued, and then his breath was sucked in, out, in, held, gasped, out, and finally his hand clamped down on mine to stop the motion, his head came up to stare dazedly at me and then fell back down onto the pillow, and I continued to feel his enormous spasms for a number of minutes, thoroughly enwrapped in enjoying the sight of his intense pleasure, and when he refused to let me hold his cock any longer, I went up to his belly and slopped around sheer OUNCES of sticky viscous fluid on his belly, keeping it off the sheets, trying to let it dry, and he was too strung out to say anything for a few minutes, but what he DID say had something to do with the fact that it didn't really MATTER that I didn't come, HE still had one of the most incredible orgasms of all time. He repeated the same sort of statement later, and it began to dawn on me that it didn't really MATTER what kind of excuses or reasons that I could come up with, WHAT HAPPENED, HAPPENED, and he wasn't TERRIBLY disappointed in the end, nor was I. I KNEW the est sex: "When you're hot, you're hot; when you're not, you're not" came in the second weekend, so I couldn't talk about THAT. Monday morning, after talking about the weekend, he said that he'd once AGAIN come to the conclusion that it made NO difference what I did during the session, but that we were both looking forward to talking about it again when we got together again, and for me the fact that we're getting together again, to try ANYTHING again, is the important part of it.
DIARY 10276
11/18/75
ROLF SPEAKS OF NON-BEING
He says he has a depression that's so intense he yearns to be an unmoving rock: lying in bed and not doing anything. He wants non-being. I say that it seems clear to ME that non-being is the TOTAL end: from non-being, being can NEVER spring---but he doesn't agree. I also say that the BODY influences the mind in unknown ways, bringing up the contented amoeba that dies. He brings over "The Homosexual Matrix" (and verifies my theory that the review in the New York Times Book Review section of October 26 was a total ax-job) and says that HE finds amoebas must CONJUGATE with another amoeba that's SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT (the same, they won't do it unless desperate; too different, they exchange TOO MUCH cellular substance and die), and that VERIFIES Stewart Emery's statements. I say that maybe he HAS everything he wants: what is his PURPOSE now? If he's ATTAINED all his purposes, maybe the only thing LEFT to attain is the state of nothingness, non-being, death. He doesn't seem to agree with that, either, but then we change the subject and I get into "Being and Time" again, and it turns out that the discussion of it turns him on, rather, and gives him something to look forward to. In fact, the next day I find that he's been out running around Prospect Park (though he pooh-poohed my idea that I felt logy when I hadn't been doing exercises, so figured that the body produced (he said serotonin) which inhibits thought and activity unless it's burned up in exercises, and if I was depressed, I just made sure I moved around a lot, and it left), seemed interested in my questions, wonderments, and conclusions about Heidegger, and then he even called me in the evening on Monday to go to the Club---which I wish I could have joined him with, but at least it shows he's interested in DOING something, and I now have a perfect excuse to spend more time with him: he's given me permission to call him anytime (trusting him to tell me to fuck off if he's involved in something else) and ask questions about where I've gotten in Heidegger. So that makes us closer, makes him less depressed, gives me the hope of more sex (really MUST borrow the film projector from Arnie so that I can lure Rolf over to see the films and have more sex with him), and incidentally increases my "establishment" knowledge of philosophy!
DIARY 10362
12/4/75
POPE'S PHONE CALL FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF
I call him at 10:30 to say that I'd "had" Michael R., that he'd shared piddly stuff ["I don't GIVE a shit about her job"] and had to go "da-DA" with his hands to get a smattering of applause, and Pope said that he was much WORSE before, and that he's IMPROVING and "he's so CUTE." I fill him in on what "Success and Failure" was all about, he talks again about Actualizations, and I say ACT should come after EST, but if one had only one to do, it would be EST, which was more dynamic, earthshaking, and involving, though ACT was far more PERSONAL (everyone shared) AND far more of a GROUP (everyone loved everyone); it was far more emotional (everyone cried) AND far more intellectual (SE seemed to admit to the goodness of the mind). We talked about TM and its success with his frantic friend Vale (and I said if there was REALLY one to be chosen, it would be TM first) and we chatted about the people in it, though Jerry Jarvis is no Werner Erhard, and he'd like to come to the advanced lectures, interested in my description of Jay Marcus and Rosemary Torres. He talked again about Sandy and Ritchie and how THEY used TM in a personal way that did the whole family good. Chatted about Gary and how Pope was disappointed I wasn't going to see Werner, and how Gary's faith in est may have been shaken by Act. He talked about his charts, and how well they were going and how much he needed money, and how much time he was spending on them and how good it felt. We talked about his being cruised and hustled in Mexico, about how he understood the poor THERE weren't so badly off, how Cuba was so small that he was SURE Castro did good for the country, and I brought up Ann's talk about China, and he agreed China was so large they could fool people about progress there, and then I did the old bit about Calcutta (this came up about Pete Hamill's review until he read the review) and how the people CHOSE to be there to send money to Bihar, how poverty THERE wasn't the same as poverty HERE, and how the beggars CHOSE to beg to make more money, since they could ALWAYS get food from charities, but no one who HADN'T been there could understand it. And about the general mistrust that EVERYONE could have about ANYTHING that was reported in newspapers, even the New York TIMES.
DIARY 10366
12/5/75
GUY S.
"I thought your orientation was primarily anal," I managed to get out. "No, Steven W. and I turn each other on by masturbating ourselves and watching the other person; I'm very visually oriented." "I guess you like porno, then, too?" "Oh, yes," he said, still not going farther. "Well, then I'd love to have you over some evening." I said, figuring there was nothing more to say. "Yes, we'll have to do that, but things are busy now, I'm going out tonight and tomorrow, but I'm free Saturday afternoon." "I'm going to the Alvin Ailey on Saturday evening, but I don't mind doing it in the afternoon." "I'll think about it and call you, but right now I have to find a paper that I'm going to deliver in 45 minutes, but just as I'm standing here, I'm getting excited about our conversation, and it'll be great to be in the meeting with the memory of this conversation fresh in my mind." And as I stood at the desk, playing with myself, I felt the thrill of incipient erection and felt like carrying on the conversation over the phone, but then hung up and danced away thinking how MARVELOUS it was that Arnie was wrong ["Of all the things that I do, anal activity is probably the least done, only when someone ELSE will be turned on very much by that---but I'm very visually oriented and love to watch people and love to have them watch me." And that would better explain the sweep of come across his new lamb's wool sweater: the come didn't go up his ass, he wasn't up the other fellow's ass, and it didn't go into his mouth, either, but he talked about the curve of the cock and the shooting, and even NOW I have a tingle at the base of my cock and a smile on my face!] that he only was interested in fucking! I fantasize that GUY may be one that I can describe and experiment with drawn-out coming, and someone that I'd LOVE to look into his dark wide eyes when he's coming, enjoying his orgasm in TOTALITY with grass and bidis and poppers, and look forward to being with him, thick waistedness and all. He kisses rather nicely, and then the idea that Stephen and he and I could have a threesome is a tempting thought, too, and maybe adding Paul B. and Bob R. and John B. in a REAL VISUAL turn-on that would get into what I like to do in sex!
DIARY 10383
12/10/75
BOB AND I WITH SECOND HOT FUDGE SUNDAE
He doesn't even want to leave the lobby of the Waldorf, saying that he got SO high with the transposition from "love" to "nothing" that he just wants to look at the people (though he mentioned that Don was looking for Shane, though he knew DON was horny and SHANE was gay, but Bob MAY have been looking for Don, and was sad, too, to see that Shane wasn't there). Then he says he "nothings" me, and we go off for a BITTER-SWEET hot fudge sundae in the SAME glasses as last week, and we LAUGH about that, though he'd REALIZED that he always gave more than he got when I remarked that I finished both sundaes BOTH times. I said that I was now perfectly clear that whatever I did was perfect, but he still said that HE wanted to see me come, and I said that I even got success in THAT, that I got the feedback that my coming was NICE ENOUGH FOR HIM TO WANT, as well as getting his and HIS orgasm, and the anticipation of sharing MY orgasm with him in the FUTURE. So I GOT EVERYTHING out of it, and I WAS feeling rather powerful, saying that if HE didn't like it that was HIS problem, though some of his statements about "changing his intent," led me to think he might not want to SEE me anymore! Then said that his boss had cried and cried and had only been able to give him BACK his check-bonus of $5000, not being able, he said, to give $10,000, and he got a $50-a-week raise, except that at the lunch Bob said that next year he wanted a PARTNERSHIP, and was saying that the boss was STUPID and holding him BACK, and told him about the $100,000 Ship'n'Shore account jeopardized because he sold the FINISHED duck design to ANOTHER company in the same building in a COMPETITIVE operation for only about $1200, and that sounds BAD. Nina was thinking not to go to Denver over Christmas, but then they decided to go, and she's making progress because she's REGISTERED in the training. I tell him briefly about Don, about Paul on Sunday, about the baths on Monday, and say that I got my cold as a punishment for having such a good time, and HE had a great weekend, too. But he's busy, can't say when we'll get together, so I guess it won't be until after Christmas, and we leave, he saying he's STILL very high and floating, despite the ugly wet rain outside and the poor fellow standing under the marquee handing out massage-parlor leaflets.
DIARY 10408
12/18/75
DONALD M.
He's trimmed part of his hair for the part of the 21-year-old and he IS scratchy, though I say I don't mind. He's always been self-conscious about his darkness and hairiness, wears contacts because he says something like "you wear them TOO" when I say I go to the baths, and puffs up his hair so much that I keep asking him if he wears a wig. He says something like he's 32, and I later say I'm 39, and then he says something about est, and I say I've been through that, and he says that his first lessons in Scientology turned him off because they talked about vanishing things. So THAT'S where Werner got that nonsense! I told him all about John, to put him in the clear, said what kinds of relationships I liked, ones that were free, and he kept saying that "you should be happy with someone you love." He'd never had a really long-range relation with anyone, but seemed to want it, but seemed very social---going out to Southampton with friends, working all the time, driving his car here and there. He hadn't seen "Nashville" but said that there were other good movies around to be seen. He had "MacArthur Park," which impressed me, but insisted on playing music while we sleep, then turned it off because he couldn't stand it. There were THINGS all over the place, and he said the maid had just left, so SHE keeps all the THINGS dusted. Kept having a strange sense of deja-vu, trying to remember where Fred's apartment was that Marty took me to with a similar view, thinking that maybe his perfume (and face powder?) reminded me of someone, and I kept thinking that what we were doing we'd DONE before. Made me feel odd for the next couple of days, but he said that HE was fighting some sort of cold, kept taking antibiotics, and maybe I got something that HE was giving away. I coughed a few times, blew my nose a few times, and we kissed and necked anyway, and he kept aspirating "Bob!" whenever we kissed particularly nicely. Gave him my number, but he hasn't called since, though maybe I made a big point about being busy for the rest of the week. Not the sort of person I'd like to see again and again, though was pleased to hear that HE didn't like anal activity either, either using the hand or coming by rubbing against the other person. At least THAT works out.
DIARY 10412
12/18/75
BOB R.'S EARLY SEX LIFE
He had a love affair with a lieutenant who was a general's aide in the Army, so that had to be VERY careful. He'd always wanted to love NOT the forms and the bodies and the GENDERS of the people, but the ESSENCES of the people, and I said that strangely Arnie was the only person I knew who did that too. I WANTED to, but didn't with the two Chinese women I went to bed with, and he remarked AGAIN about his going to bed with Norma and Lew. He talked about someone who'd gotten knocked up in college, and he was willing to marry her, but the mother of the girl said thanks but no thanks. He talked about his friendship with a pair of lovers: Ben who was the older and who later died of cancer, and Someone who was the younger, whom he'd met on the beach at Cannes, who wanted him to come to Europe with the two of them, but he didn't want to live that way. Ben was an art dealer and had fabulous parties that Bob met all kinds of interesting people at. Then he worked with Nina and they decided to get married and then adopted Alicia. He said quite a few things about when he was in the Army, but I don't remember anything more about them. He wanted to have a small group at my place, but with no one about whom he had pictures, like Arnie and John, though John C. would be nice, but I thought of Art B. He thought Big Bob was into it too much, was now confused and revaluing himself, and Bob had lost track of the young kid that I liked when he brought over. He still talked about Avi, saying that he'd forgotten him the first time he listed people he'd loved, and how both of them had gotten VERY heavy into it, but how Bob didn't like when Avi equated him with his dead twin, his grandmother, and various other people who weren't BOB, but then he insisted again that I must have been hurt by that a lot, but I said that I didn't think I was. He said that he, too, felt himself slowing down somewhat now that he was getting close to 40, but that he still liked being with people and wanted to meet new ones. For the third time, he gave me the last of his hot fudge sundae and I ate it down greedily, and we had no trouble killing about 100 minutes of conversation that I'm not getting down at ALL.
DIARY 10475
1/2/76
DON M.'S NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY
The apartment is lavishly decked with balloons, crepe paper, ribbons, candy in a dozen dishes, candles flickering in three dozen places, and he's in red slacks and shirt introducing me to a slacked Eileen who's helping out too, and Annie shows me where the ice is for the wine that I open for Linda and me, and we sit and chat until Alan P. comes in and starts putting hands and arms and claim on Stephen, and his expression goes from funny to pathetic, Linda doesn't know whether to act innocent or knowing, and we start talking about Jamaica and where to stay with her parents, and the advantages of her living in Carnegie House on 57th and 6th. At LAST another couple comes in, around 11:15, and then more and more people arrive, more than a few gay guys, and I talk to Stephen and he says he enjoys the party, so we can stay. Finish the one bottle and go for a second, and Don says to wait for the dynamite grass that's coming, and soon joints are being passed around from hand to grubby hand of one older couple, and Eileen's on drinking and grass wagon, Stephen isn't smoking or he'd settle into conversationlessness, and Linda isn't mixing drinks and smokes. I smoke, laugh at Alan, blow on a horn at midnight and get Steve's champagne which blows its cork when I unwrap the wire, fill the glasses, get a couple of toasts, then in for food, sandwiches; Eileen pulling off a turkey leg and I laugh at until I taste part of it, and I'm chewing away on that and candy and cheese and cold cuts and rolls, but I miss the fruit cake and the cole slaw and the cranberry sauce and a couple of other things. People in the dining room tend to be older and more formal, though one Sandy in a black dress with rhinestone squares, with a back deformity, and Sandy the Jewish mother in the pale blue dress seem to move in both circles, and these are the two women, with their nondescript husbands attached somewhere, who are responsible for taking the party out of the hands of Don. Then an older fellow Don calls Lee, and a red-headed girl he later finds out is named Alicia start dancing in the hallway, with the silver faun staring fixedly at their groins, and their movements are so greatly enjoyed by both themselves and me that we're GRINNING at each other from ear to ear. Stephen's dancing with someone (after having had the courtesy to take Linda down for a taxi when her black, tipped (as opposed to black-tipped) cabman didn't show up and she still wanted to get to her publisher's party at 64th and Park, and I find myself being asked by Alicia, and we're standing apart, me feeling silly, and she grabs me and bumps me into the right rhythm, and then opens her arms and lets in Lester. We three start bumping into the rhythm, and all the legs WORK together, and it's quite incredible feeling, so much so that my head's above the other two, shouting "I don't BELIEVE this!" Alicia's kissing Lester and I sort of dive into the middle of it, and both are perfectly willing, and the three-way is totally incredible until Sondra's voice goes ringing through the room, "Look at what they're doing over there---it's OBSCENE, and it looks like such FUN!!" Screams of laughter, I break up and they hold me in place, and then SHE'S in the group, grinding back and forth, wide dark eyes wider with surprise at what she's DOING, and then I try to kiss her and she drops back shrieking a NO, and then saying "Well, maybe," and I kiss a bit and she drops back AGAIN with a shriek of laughter, and then she's away. Then Don and another girl join me and Alicia, and we FOUR start necking and dancing, going through the same marvelous motions, and the music is perfect, my stonedness is perfect, the room is perfect, and I insist that Alicia is one of the most incredible women in the city of New York that night. Then THAT breaks up, I get some more food, watch Alan P. pass out on his partner against the wall, and later someone says he's 75! Then three fellows come in, an older one who moves away, a middle-aged guy, handsome, with a bushy mustache, whom I stand beside in order to try to meet THE MOST HANDSOME MAN AT THE PARTY, who's standing between them, sort of a thin, young, handsome Burt Reynolds, as Eileen described him, dark, marvelous eyes, great pale skin, beautiful body, and a lovely expression of openness, but then I never saw him again. Later Don reported that lots of good looking new people came in after the record player blew a fuse, but they just sat around and talked, which he liked, but he DID admit that I'd seen the best part of the party. I wasn't drinking anything anymore, nor smoking, because my system was rapidly closing down. I decided to go into the bedroom and rest for awhile, but Eileen was in there (and then out, it got confusing---also, I found that I go to the bathroom about three or four times each party, just to move around and maybe get away from Linda), so I lay down beside the bed. Don said that I had such a beatific smile on my face that he brought people in to look at me, and I heard them exclaiming above me so I'd open my eyes and smile more broadly and waggle a couple of fingers at them. Eileen was back watching "Darling" on Home Box Office, and then there was a National Anthem (I suppose it was ours) and the set went off. People kept coming in to get their coats, looking down at me, and I thought I waved to everyone until Stephen said that I hadn't waved at HIM, so I conceded that I may have slept a bit. Then it got quieter, Eileen was gone, and Don came in to start undressing me about 4 am, and I undressed and crawled into bed quite aware that Don wasn't there and that I didn't care. I was glad that I hadn't gotten sick, as it felt I just might, nor did I pass out, as Alan P. did, nor had I gotten unpleasant. But the combination of wine and champagne at midnight and all that GREAT grass was too much for me. Later, Don said they were waiting in line in the study while Alicia rolled joints for them all. He said some dancers came in but sat together and talked about their love lives, and Don tried to get them drinks and make sure that everything was OK, but they adamantly refused to let anyone else into their conversations. The group changed a couple of times, he said, and then he had sex with Stephen, who tried sleeping on the sofa, but couldn't and decided to go home at 10 am. Eileen stayed over, sleeping somewhere, and Don had sent Annie home about 4, insisting that they would NOT clean up that evening, and then he came to bed with me at some uncertain time, because I didn't wake up again until the clock said that it was after 11 am.
DIARY 10527
1/12/76
GUY S.
He'd gotten married at 19 to a woman seven years older than he was, who then permitted him to go back to college, even to graduate school, and they quickly had the first son, who's now going on 15 (Guy's 35), and Guy said that when they were changing from tennis recently, the kid had an erection that he found VERY attractive, and the kid acknowledged it with a "what can you do?" shrug of the shoulders. The family doesn't know he's gay, he says, but he's sure the sons will be OK with it, since they pride themselves on being open about everything, including homosexuality. Then he didn't care for his wife, divorced her, and moved in with a friend, who insisted from the first that they sleep in the same bed, and he fell madly in love with the guy and STILL loves him, though the guy said he was never really in love with Guy. Then he moved out of Richmond and came up to New York and is now taking up with a girl named Rhea, who knows that he's gay, but he finds that she's very together and doesn't mind, and between her and his other MALE friends, he's kept very busy. He didn't ordinarily have an erection, except right at the first when he whiffed the popper and we were smoking, and I kept working over him, reminded strongly of ME with my limpness, and interestingly I was STRONGLY HARD through the whole thing, even though his body didn't turn me on THAT much. But he was very verbal about the cock and balls and how good it felt, and how nice my skin was, and then in the morning he said that he'd gone to some kind of sex therapy that said he should never work toward a GOAL, just enjoy each moment for the moment even though he didn't necessarily have an erection. Would be a good thing for me to say to Bob R., too. Didn't have the courage to ask to look at the pornography IN the bed, but he did get up, move around the mirror, look at me from odd angles, and showed an unpleasant penchant for diving into my asshole when he really got hot, rolling all over the bed and making me concerned if he was doing what he wanted, but from his gasps and pants he was, even though he wasn't hard. I didn't want to delay much longer for fear I'd go down, so I just jerked myself off and he crooned and mumbled over my come, and I enjoyed doing the same for him, working over him NICELY after he'd come, getting those extra groans fresh from his throat.
DIARY 10529
1/12/76
INSIGHT ON BOB G. AND ME
[Notes taken at 3:10 am [I smoke to write them]]: Incredible thought: during today, toward Bob I acted precisely as Mom acts toward ME. What was I feeling for him? Immense unfulfilled love that I couldn't even bring myself to admit to him! What was I myself feeling? Miserably inferior, even wondering how I got the honor of his presence with me. So jealous of the looks he got when he goes out---yet loving to be seen with him in public since his presence elevates mine BY its very presence. And what do I do? Neglect to say he's handsome, not notice he shaved off his mustache, ridicule him by saying he looks like Norma, criticizing what he says, making fun of his attitudes, razzing his beliefs, JUST AS MOM DOES TO ME! And as I can NOW see the breaking heart and longing look hidden behind my sarcasm and the criticism, hopefully I can look behind MOM'S façade and find HER heavy heart within. And TELLING Bob this, even if it IS a blatant play for his beautiful bod---the worst that could happen is that I would CONTINUE not to be able to play with it. GOD I love him so, yet GOD at the same time how I drive him away. Amazing what REFUSAL of love can produce. And poor Don, and poor Arnie! I wish I could COME! [I say this because I'm sort of worn from last night and this morning with Guy, and am saving myself for the possibility of Bob R. or Stephen tomorrow. Called Stephen to come over this evening, but he said he'd arranged with someone else for drinks and bars, so he'd have to go, but he'd like to come over tomorrow if Bob R. doesn't come over in the afternoon, as there's a chance of. Bob and Arnie say that Don is SO strange, and people sort of look at him in the restaurant and on the street, and he's alternately quiet and brash, with us and away from us, though when he tells me LATER what he's been through, if it's TRUE (since I suspect such bizarre tales as plays to get my sympathy and company), he acted remarkably WELL. Arnie HATED most of the Saturday Night on ABC, Bob laughed through a lot of it, I thought some of it was VERY funny and some failed as humor, and Don said he was so tied up in himself that he couldn't react, so he didn't care for the humor, either.
DIARY 10532
1/12/76
PHONE CONVERSATION WITH BOB G.
Z: I called to thank you for helping rescue me Saturday night.
G: Why do you put yourself into that position?
Z: The only place I put myself was the back room of the Anvil---
G: Yeah, you return phone calls, and you called, and you accepted further invitations---
Z: Stupid stupid?
G: Well, you're a big boy.
Z: I had no idea that watching TV was going to send everyone home, but I thank you for letting them do it.
G: He was very nice: he drove Arnold all the way to his bar, and he drove me all the way back to the East Side and MY bar, isn't that nice?
Z: And I also wanted to apologize a little bit---
G: You always apologize to me---
Z: Yes, except that this time I found out why, why I do what I do.
G: Oh, you did? Why?
Z: You really want to know?
G: Probably not. (We both laugh)
Z: Well, I'm waiting for the answer to the question; "Probably not," isn't definite.
G: No, I don't wanna know.
Z: Huh?
G: I don't wanna know.
Z: OK.
G: How did you happened to arrive at your conclusion?
Z: Well, I---have so often been annoyed with myself for feeling the need to apologize to you, and sort of wondered why the hell I kept on doing it.
G: Now that you know why, are you gonna stop? No?
Z: I'm not sure. It's a situation I have no control over.
G: Oh, c'mon, you're saying you have no control over your actions?
Z: Well, I'll see if my understanding of what it is, and what the background of it is, changes anything. I realized I've been doing something that my mother's been doing for years and years.
G: Like mother, like daughter.
Z: Yes. Part of it---I'll see what happens when I go home for my sister's wedding.
G: What does your mother and your sister's wedding got to do with me?
Z: No, they don't, it's just that my mother acts the same way toward me as I act toward YOU.
G: Oh! What'd I do to deserve THAT?
Z: Well, I DO.
G: You certainly do (somewhat confused in here) You always picked on me and I never knew why (starts his crying/weeping bit)
Z: No, you can say it more accurately, I always pick on you and you don't WANNA know why.
G: (sobbing) Stop picking on me all the time.
Z: (I wait until he stops) Finished? (Laugh)
G: What are you DOING---(and the conversation changes topics)
Z: On a conscious level I didn't know what I was doing when I invited you all over, but on an unconscious level I certainly did.
G: Um.
Z: I'm hoping to learn how to USE my wisdom rather than STUMBLING on it.
G: Yeah, watch it, you're stumbling over your wisdom.
G: (Talks about his meeting a humpy number at the Everard introduced to him by Ralph, his little ophthalmologist. The fellow was 6'2", humpy blond, not with a Robert Redford face, but nice. He came from Key West.)
Z: See, you had a chance to go to Key West but you turned it down. (One last dig!) (We chat about the Everard, which I AGAIN say I'll have to get to.)
G: (For about the fifth time, when he finished something) So---o---. Have a nice day.
Z: Yes, you too.
G: Bye-e.
Z: Goodbye.
DIARY 10579
1/30/76
TALK WITH MOM ABOUT SEX
"Well, do you fuck HIM in the ass or does he fuck YOU in the ass, or what?" I smile and say something like "Now that I know what vocabulary to use, I can talk." I tell her that I don't like to be fucked, so I don't fuck, that I was gay way back when I preferred playing with Billy to playing with Lynn, that Jimmy Shimko told me at about age 8 that if I did it a long time I'd get milk from it, that I played with Georgie Michaels (and she said she never DID like him for being a bad influence) and with Danny Siladie, but that nothing happened until I got to New York the first time. She replied in turn about HER first experience other than Dad, which was Dr. Watson when he observed that she needed a man after her breakdown just after the divorce, and then she took up with Bryn M., whom she liked very much, and who later invested in land in Virginia and is now worth a quarter of a million. She talked about Mike again, who liked to dance, about the fellows she'd meet when she traveled, and about someone who she'd dropped just a couple of months ago, and she THOUGHT that I'd called her a bitch last time BECAUSE of him, and I assured her that that was NOT the reason, that she was being nasty to ME. She again tried to take blame, but I listed a number of reasons why people thought people became gay, but NO ONE really knew why, and I knew it far before anyone could have influenced me anyway. I talked about how I could be in love with a number of people at once, how John and I went to orgies that he'd started, and how John A. met John C. at an orgy. She seemed to enjoy it, and acted fairly surprised when I said there WERE no women at the orgy. We talked about Madge a bit, too, and she repeated TWICE the story of when I called and said "Guess what, Madge just got married," which even I don't remember. After a while she didn't want to hear any more of the details, but I managed to slip in a few more, and she felt that she'd told me everything about Dad: how big he was, uncircumcised, how his father didn't want him to marry her because "he's a bull, thick neck, big hands, big everywhere," and Mom retorted: "Big woman, big hole; small woman, ALL hole." That's my MOM, and most everyone I tell the leading question GASPS.
DIARY 10597
2/3/76
TALK WITH DON
I step into it by saying that I want to talk about us, and he immediately starts by what I think is his saying that he's offering me his love, and I should take it and do anything he wants me to do because love is a valuable thing, and as long as I run away from it, I'll have trouble with things like rebirthing and Rolfing, which I tell him about to start the conversation. I talk for a couple of hours leading up to the sorrow I felt, then say that I want to clarify our relationship, but when he insists that I should just blurt it out, I say that I feel that the sadness is somehow connected with my habit, in the past, of saying that it was MY fault if the relationship didn't work out, citing my excuses to the women in the IBM office (Sheila and Sharon, not by name) that I'm INCAPABLE of loving, rather than telling them that I'd far RATHER fall in love with a man than with a woman. I say that John is the first person I could REALLY say that I loved, and Don keeps sort of shrinking back from him, as if I hurt him when I talk about John. He keeps insisting that I stop THINKING about it, and I keep WANTING to say that I'm not attracted to him physically, but I just CAN'T think of how to say it, even thinking that I'll say "I like your MIND, don't you see?" But the only thing I can blurt out is "But I'd STILL rather hurt myself than hurt someone ELSE," and it DOES feel to be true, save that I no longer feel that I'm THAT much stronger than anyone else---more exactly (since I DO feel QUITE a bit stronger than Don or Art when it comes to US), I want to TRY HOW IT WOULD BE to tell the truth: would it clear things up with THEM as it has with me and Michael? I try to think of ways to say it, but at the end he's SO tired, but his last statement is "Whatever you do, please play fair with me by telling me the truth; it's the only fair thing to do," and I see quite clearly that it IS the fair thing to do, but the question now becomes HOW and WHEN to tell him: like before we go to Pennsylvania or after? But I'm exhausted by 3:30 and toss till 4, deciding to leave it to the dim future when I don't have to THINK about it, but that the situation will PRESENT ITSELF in which it'll be better to talk about it. How AWFUL it is that I find it SO HARD TO TELL THE TRUTH when it will HURT someone. But that's just the way it IS; how can I swallow someone ELSE'S pain and disappointment?
DIARY 10601
2/4/76
MORE TALK WITH DON
I'd decided to talk in the restaurant, where he can't react too strongly, but then feel that's not fair, so in the car I give him the choice, "Now or then," and he says now. Stopping to watch the stately procession of 8 fawns or does across the road, I say that I DO like him for his interests and his mind, but I DON'T want anything more physical, and he flabbergasts me by saying that he KNEW that: that the second time I came over, when I confessed everything with complete honesty, he thought there might be something going, but then when we had sex that didn't work that night, he had ALREADY resigned himself to the fact that we wouldn't have sex, but that wasn't the important thing since he still wanted us to be FRIENDS. I said that I'd been reluctant to talk about it Friday night because I'd be hurting him by saying something that he didn't already KNOW, but that the success of THIS afternoon was so great that the thought of taking the Florida trip under the same kind of circumstances seemed to ME to be good, and it still did to HIM. He said that he felt better that I'd said that, stealing a phrase from Michael by saying "I think it took you a lot of guts to say that, too," and I didn't mention the echo effect I felt. He said that in the past he'd been very religious, and that he had to be practically MARRIED to anyone before he'd have sex with them, but that now he was a very great TOUCHING person, and he'd have to control himself around me, but that he DID like to touch, but that didn't mean he was searching for anything MORE. I felt quite relieved, because the idea of the Florida trip had begun to seem nice, and also I didn't want the weekend messed up by my wanting something that HE didn't want. And I felt better to finally get it off my chest, and HE was the one who took the charge off the word love by saying that it had nothing to do with going to bed, of course he loved me and he thought I probably loved him or I wouldn't have been as honest with him, and he cleared up a few of the things that had been said on Friday, and it turned out that what he'd LIKED were the truths that I'd told him, with no bullshit, and so Friday was REALLY a disaster as far as I was concerned. STUPID of me!
DIARY 10798
3/22/76
"I LOVE YOU" DENNIS STYLE
We're lying on the floor and I'm saying that I got 6 no answers on my unit, and he says that ONE of them was HIM, because he called, then when he heard the machine, debated leaving the message, "Hello, Bob, this is Dennis, I love you." I didn't do NEARLY the freak-out with Bob R. or John, and just smiled and cuddled more and said "Hm, I was going to say about our great conversation the other morning [DIARY 10795] that we were finding new ways of saying we loved each other, but I was afraid that I'd scare you away." He said "I love you" another time in the evening, and the next morning, when he was leaving from Guy's, and I was quite conscious that he was "ahead of me" in the "I love you" sweepstakes, I took him in my arms, said "I love you," kissed him goodbye and wished him a good day, and felt some relief that THAT part of the relationship was passed. When he said he was 29 on the phone, it was the first time he said anything about age, and though he might be lying just a bit to make himself sound younger than the low 30s, it still puts about 10 years between us, which he knows about from looking at my life in books and maps, but it's nice to get the "I love you's" out of the way so that the relationship can struggle toward where it's going to be at its best. He says how open and free he feels with me, but I STILL ask him a few questions and I joke about how COMPLETELY he evades them, though later in the evening he DOES tell me about his former relationships, which makes me feel somewhat better since he's been in SOME, but hasn't been around THAT much, so it's easier to deal with him since he's relatively new to anything INTENSE. Almost anything he says, sadly, I can think of something to say ABOUT, and I keep bringing myself up short with "I'm talking too much," or "There I go again," or "THAT was a long digression," but he seems to hang on everything, like the interpolations, and go along with my verbosity. Maybe it makes him feel like a good listener, and maybe he's even a BIT on the shy side, pushing himself to meet people so successfully that some don't see the shyness inside. But talking, sexing, being with him is a delight, and I'm starting to want to be with him more!!
DIARY 10805
3/24/76
HOURS OF TALK WITH DENNIS
We lay at night and talk about various things, but in the morning I mention the whole intricate area of anal intercourse, he talks about how he talks with his brother Leroy, who's 35, divorced, and still thinks of himself as a sick child supported by his parents. Dennis talks about his parents with love, I tell the story of the acid, getting back to my father, having him weep when I say that I got what's good about me from HIM, and tears come to Dennis's eyes as he listens to me and watches tears come to MY eyes. I talk about the trip to Russia, how I blurted out that John and I were lovers, and then how I talked in detail on my last trip home, and listened to his qualms and hopes about telling HIS parents that he's gay, grinning at my fantasy of LAST Sunday saying that he's great and happy, and THIS Sunday telling them that he's met this great GUY, but since they like Dana so much, I say it might be better to swing it off Dana, since I had good luck with Mom when I swung it off John, whom she liked. Told him about how I told my sister, and that she married Dennis Robinson. Talked about how much there was to talk about, how great it was to learn another area, like jazz, from someone, from whom I can absorb a life of experience. He asks how old I am, saying that I must be younger than he is, about 26, and I say that I'm older, and we get up to 35 and I say to leave it there: I don't want him THINKING of me as an older person because I don't think of myself as an older person, though I very much liked all the experiences of all the years that I HAVE lived. Talked about my psychiatrist, my pivotal point of the LSD; previously about the Rolfing and Gurdjieff to explain the mental, physical, emotional triumvirate that came to life during the third Rolfing session, leading to the realization in the 9th that this might make it easier for me to be fucked, and previously about how lucky I was to have met SO many people who were such good cooks, except that I never learned from them. Talked about happiness, affection, the niceness of touching people, the luck of knowing nice people to talk with and have sex with, the goodness of his scrambled eggs, beans, coffee, toast, though I had what SURE felt like heartburn, and when I remarked about it, I burped up a coffee taste. Poor.
DIARY 10809
4/2/76
ARNOLD'S BIRTHDAY PARTY HERE
Everyone's sat themselves down to talk in small groups: Arnold with Stephen in the radiator corner (where it's warm, but good for Arnold, who's coming down with a cold, sadly), Guy and Paul at the far end of the sofa, JohnV and Dennis in the middle of the sofa, and poor Rolf elbowed out at the near end of the sofa, so I sit and talk with him, passing around the cheese and paté, and I'm thinking that it's not starting well, so I tell everyone to take their wine glasses from the table and start drinking, and that starts things in somewhat better, though the wine's not THAT good, being rather tart. Then we start eating about 8:45, I serve around the hot and medium chili, but STILL the hot's not that hot, though I used ABOUT a container of fresh chili powder, mostly in the one. But the onions make it good, the small amount of Ditali by Ronzoni (half a package) was left properly al dente and ends up discernible for more than a mush, and everyone seems to like it, and it's almost ALL used by evening's end. Put out the salad to be served at the same time, and I'm relieved to see that whoever started it put the salad on their meal plate, leaving what I'd thought was the salad plate for people's bread (which was not too warmed, thanks to John's bad advice about putting it in at 500E for about 5 minutes; it didn't get warmed through) and CLEAN for dessert, so I don't have to wash between. I'm out of the room more than I'm in, serving, putting out more butter, refilling the wine, getting Stephen's wine out which hardly anyone drinks, getting soda for Rolf and water for Guy (I'd forgotten about his not drinking and smoking in the same evening), putting on John's coffee to warm, bringing out the cups, filling the pitcher with milk twice, clearing away the dishes, bringing out the desserts. But everyone says everything's good, though there's a hunk of bread left, Guy doesn't care for Dennis's salad; in fact, there's a lot of it left; Rolf's dessert is a smash, with the added thoughtfulness of his dessert sauterne to go with it, making a doubling of the wine glass use necessary, which IS tacky. Then it seems that I've barely eaten when everyone's finished, it's about 10, and BobG shows up for dessert, though whether preceding or following JohnC I can't remember. Then everyone moves away from the table, all remark about how small the table folds down to, and some help me putting things away: Dennis emptying the milk into the container, people putting things in the fridge, coffee cups brought out, the coffee-stained batik is folded without assessing damage when I spilled the edges of John's flask, and the dishes piled up rather neatly. The rug is extraordinarily fuzzy, so I'm glad I didn't vacuum. The red lights go off and the tiny window light comes on, but when that doesn't get people started, I turn that off too and put on the Moody Blues to REALLY get it going. Then I bring out the grass, someone else has a few joints, but I'm just filling and refilling my pipe (oh, things before: I remarked about the number of colored-paper packages in the living room, and bring them all in for Arnie: cologne from Stephen "who keeps a supply for things like this," soap from JohnC to "keep things clean," and a joke book for phone machines from BobG. Don called once during dinner; I put him off; he called again later, Guy spoke to him and made it clear it was an orgy; I promised to tell him all about it. Hardly anyone was drinking anything, since I had hardly anything to offer except grass), and finally Michael comes in, so we stand in the kitchen and talk as he gets caught up in stonedness. I wasn't in the living room too much before it started, but then there were a number of naked bodies. Then Rolf wanted to see the porno, saying that his stomach was upset because his nervous stomach wasn't supposed to eat spicy or rich foods, and then he had two portions of the spicy chili and a large helping of his own-made chocolate mouse and cream! So he looked with Arnie at the porno, then left, as did Arnie, who kept feeling up people and being told to leave because of his cold. Stephen surprised me, too, saying that he'd met someone at Boot Hill who wanted him to be faithful, he'd thought of coming this morning to have sex, but now he felt guilty and was leaving. So that left actually 8 of us for sex, but it was a GLORIOUS 8. JohnC and Paul and Dennis and Guy going strong in a foursome; Dennis and JohnC and me making a threesome; Dennis (he sure got around, didn't he!?) and JohnV and Michael making a threesome; Dennis and Michael; JohnV and Guy and Dennis; Paul and Guy were the only ones who used the bedroom, everything taking place in front of the music, which impressed Michael so much that he wanted to get the albums, and I sorted them down to find that I'd played the "Middle Moodys": Days of Future Passed, In Search of the Lost Chord, To Our Children's Children's Children, and On the Threshold of a Dream; so I DIDN'T play #1 and the last three, as I recall them, since I'm not as much INTO them. JohnC and I go at it, and he's SO hard that he comes VERY nicely, and I'm pleased to get back with him. Dennis and Paul and I indulge in an outrageous kissing match, as do Guy and Paul and JohnC. JohnV has made quite an impression on Dennis, and Guy's in love with Rolf, hoping more can be done. Paul leaves fairly early, saying he has to get to work, so BobG leaves with him, and BobG later tells me that he was SURE it was about 3 and was flabbergasted to find that it was 12:30 only, but BobG even enjoyed it, saying that he liked Michael and JohnC and Dennis---so it was quickly down to 6; I still didn't touch Michael, and then about 3 everyone seemed to be getting ready to leave, and I'm pleased to find that Dennis can stay. There's more music to be put on, getting out Simon and Garfunkel even, and the Bachianas Brazilieras was a mistake early on, though the other cuts on the same record were good, everyone liked the Led Zeppelin, and Carole King went nicely. At one point either Dennis or Michael stood amazed, saying that a naked man just dashed out the door, and I guessed it was JohnV, and I'd totally forgotten the cannoli, which I found in the fridge next morning with the remains of the paté, cheese, dessert, and salad. Dennis found that I didn't come, and brought me off on the sofa, then we went to bed at 4. But I couldn't take my hands off him, we kept talking, and then I turn on the light again, ejaculating about the incredible luxury, and we cuddled and necked delightfully, then turned the light off again at 4:55. But I couldn't sleep, my system demanding that I write, so I got up and wrote the notes on DIARY 10812, feeling great about it, and getting to sleep finally at 5:30, sky bluing outside.
DIARY 10835A
4/15/76
DON'S MEDICAL PROBLEMS
He reviews his pre-Christmas stint with the Blue Angel that had him running to the doctors to see what was wrong with his LUNGS from the smoke inhalation. Then he talked about the time he couldn't WALK for a couple of months after he took "that last run down the hill Sunday afternoon before leaving" and fell and slipped a number of discs in his spine, which every so often goes out and causes him great pain, as it did when he was driving back from New Hope one weekend. Then there was the thing about his breaking out on his back, and everyone taking smears and treatments, and he had lots of medicines and X-rays and they'd thought they had it cleared up, but then he came down with it again, and once AGAIN in South America, and they wanted to send him to Johns Hopkins again, but he wouldn't go, waiting 18 days or so for the results of the tests, and though he didn't repeat the name of Hodgkin's Disease that he'd given me before, he said that they'd given him 6 months to live, and then said that it was not so active anymore. So that explains finally why he was so reluctant to think about our going to Mexico in the summer or early fall. Then he talked in detail about Gaston's dying, saying that he'd been sick the day before and Don didn't want to take him to the doctor's, "You can't run an old dog---he was nearly 14 years old---to the doctor EVERY time he gets sick, can you?" Then he promised if he'd still be sick in the morning he'd take him to the doctor, but he knew somewhere in the back of his head that he'd be dead in the morning, and when he got up, he was, with his head stretched out to the food, trying to take a crap, with an awful expression on his face so that it took Don a couple of hours to just call the doctor to come and get rid of the body. Somewhere in here, Dennis got up and ran his fingers through Don's hair, kissing it, saying he liked it, and I gazed dizzily, not knowing whether Dennis knew it was a rug or not, not knowing whether Don thought Dennis was playing games with him. But Dennis's sincerity (and Don's, for that matter) broke through to the both of them and they seemed genuinely fond of each other by the time the long evening was over, and I thought we might try to spend MORE time together (and we might try it this Saturday, only 17 days after the LAST encounter).
DIARY 10888
5/16/76
STRAIGHT-GAY NYC ENCOUNTERS
Dennis had taken to walking with his arm around my waist, so I put my arm companionably around his shoulders, but as we were walking down Fifth Avenue toward 42nd there came a shout from a group of teenagers that we passed: "Hey, fag, why don't you try a woman?!" I turned and shouted the first thing that came to mind: "I have, and they suck!" The older man with them started roaring with laughter, and I couldn't tell if he was FOR me or AGAINST me. But the girl who's shouted came running up to ask "Do you REALLY like guys more than gals?" and I said that I'd tried gals, so in fact I DID like guys more than gals, and she couldn't understand it. I tried to put my arm around her waist, and she shied off, screaming that I was going to attack her, but then getting all confused and didn't know WHAT to do. I must admit to loading my argument a bit more on the female side than necessary, but that didn't help her confusion. She wanted to know where things were going, since they were from Islip and wanted to see some action, and we suggested the Village, and they said they were bound for the 7th Avenue subway for just that reason. Dennis later said that he thought she was desperately trying to become sophisticated against overwhelming odds (the last three words mine, not his), but I thought she was just more outgoing than the others. We couldn't figure WHAT the older guy was doing along with them. Then on the subway, a little old lady sat next to us and I guess overheard some of our conversation, because when she was just about to get off, she turned her bright face to us and said "You two really talk like queers," and the only thing I could say was to say that we WERE, and then we looked at each other, Dennis and I, and wondered what on earth the earth was coming to, that everyone seemed to be open to talking to us---aside from the obvious reason that we felt very close to each other and maybe for that reason even ENCOURAGED people to come up and talk to us! I just hope that we have the sense not to attract the wrong kind of people to us, but Dennis seems sensitive about the proper neighborhoods to put his arm around me, rub the back of my neck, or even kiss, in the rare case of an Inwood Hill Park.
DIARY 10919
5/19/76
DINNER AT DON'S
In with my velvet to find Don with a sleeveless pullover sweater over a shirt, so I take my jacket off and meet four or five women in the kitchen, with a handsome-faced Don, from New Orleans, and we talked about drinks and mixing them, then started on the trip as others came and passed photographs back and forth, but not of Rio, only of THEM, complaining that someone got all the curtains and not her DRESS. I kept drinking, then tried a joint as more and more couples showed up, and it turned into a party for about 15, with not quite enough room around the table to eat, and the lasagna was uninspired, the salad mediocre, the spinach salad got lost in the living room, someone spilled wine over the tabletop, using up napkins, and Don and I sat at the head of the table in Louis XVI chairs. Then more joints, talking to a young woman who said she was very stoned, and kept listening to Alex, who was so hyper that he seemed to be making everyone. Don had to leave for an hour or so, and I felt disappointed when he left. They insisted on playing Brazilian music, danced to it for a bit, swinging around, and I couldn't get into that, so I went back to drinking. Conversations I didn't care about took place on women, men, travels, clothes, and decorating, and cars and jokes and how drunk everyone was getting, and I had a few friends there but most people seemed like strangers. And I never DID see anyone eat any of the fruit that I spent so much for, though Don paid me for it the next day. More drinking, and I felt that I could get soused or leave, and since there were not really any sexy guys there, there seemed nothing to stay for, since Don from New Orleans didn't seem to be coming back. I didn't care for the music played, didn't care that the hi-fi seemed to be going off kilter, that some of the women were interested in talking with me though I wasn't interested in talking with them. Don sweated and stayed in the middle of everything, and if he was trying to forget, get swept away, it was working perfectly. But I felt that the whole thing was a loss; I'd go out of my mind if I was forced to go to one of these a week, or even a month, and figured I just had to steer clear of most of Don's friends or else I'd end up VERY depressed.
DIARY 10925
5/11/76
PHONE WITH ROLF
He calls to say that he met the second person in charge of the team that he'd work for and he hates him: "the Jew bastard insulted me in three different ways with his preconceptions of me, him, and my work, in our first 15 minutes" and he said that he'd actually sat down and knocked off a three-page report for the OTHER fellow on Thursday because he liked him so much, but he said that he couldn't do ANYTHING for anyone he hated, so he wasn't taking the job unless he could work TOTALLY away from him---so that I could get in on some of the shekels he was actually looking forward to giving me for my helping him write. Then we got into politics, saying he'd vote for Ford because he vetoed 44 bills put up by a stupid Democratic Congress, didn't know what Carter's policies were, except that he had the same freewheeling politics as the Kennedys, whom he liked, and then got into the mind-blowing hypothesis that I was a conservative from the 19th century point of view: believed in TOTAL individual freedom as opposed to the Fascism that he says HHH and his ilk are promulgating. From his point of view the only safety for the United Stated depends on the intelligent, finance-smart Republicans to win the election and permit industry to make the profits that will insure the monetary stability of the United States, because if the Democrats get in, they'll spend money for welfare and public works, turning us socialistic, fascistic, and maybe even Communist (I didn't ask), trying to break down the rich) who'd probably find ways out of it anyway, or else they'd leave, making some OTHER country rich) and salve the poor (who will get increasingly lazy (as I've gotten with unemployment benefits) and want increasingly more money for nothing) to the detriment of the entire economy, which would then go under to NO one's benefit. He talks of a number of other things (he'd have to, in a two-hour conversation), but I can't remember them now, and I kept getting the idea that he was tremendously patient with my ignorance, and that next time he called I'd really like to get a recording of what he said, since everything seems so thoroughly thought out and reasonable, and entirely contrary to anything I've ever thought about the US economic system.
DIARY 11049
7/7/76
DON AND MEXICO AND ME
It had STARTED as an extension of a trip to Florida. I KNOW he originally started by thinking of FLYING to the Yucatan, but New Orleans entered in quickly and I thought we were DRIVING around. He kept extending the SECOND trip, and at one point I think it may have been to 6-7 weeks, but then he said I had to be back for the index, and I said that was the FIRST trip! Then he'd said (at Buckhill Falls) that he'd pay for all the travel expenses, and that I could just pay for the supplement between single-room and double-room prices, which would come to about $7 per night, probably, since he insists on staying in the better hotels for a good bed for his back and a clean bathroom. Then when he made the reservations for the hotel in Atlanta, it suddenly came out that I would be paying a THIRD of the hotels and then last Thursday, after "Runner Stumbles" he said he had to be back in September, and again thought we were FLYING down. I totaled up the miles and figured we needed more time, but when I presented everything to him on MONDAY, suddenly he was saying that I should pay HALF the hotels and HALF the gas bills, letting HIM pay for the gas when he could with his credit card so that he could take it off as expenses for the convention. And it didn't look as if he could move it into September, and kept talking about how he had to make sure there were hospitals along the way in case he got sick, and kept talking about pills for dysentery. $1100 is NOT what I want to pay for a rushed one-month trip to Mexico, since I could do it LOTS cheaper staying in CHEAPER hotels and taking local transportation. I was told to check up on prices for flying from Atlanta and taking public transportation around, but then the index work got more demanding and I didn't have time to do it by today. It looks like I'm not going, and Don was so down on Monday that HE said he wouldn't mind if it were cancelled, sort of reading my mind. Dennis came up with good points: renting other rooms if we found someone we couldn't go to the bar to avoid others' tricks; my writing and reading to fill my time; kitty expenses; laundry and eating and travel time, and other little things. So the Yucatan is STILL some place I WANT to see.
DIARY 11054
7/7/76
FOUR STRIKES AGAINST BOB G
I was angry when Arnold said that BobG was going home to Chicago for Father's Day, and he didn't order his plane ticket from me, even though he'd done it perfectly successfully before, choosing to go to Michael, who gets nothing from it. Then he didn't call before he left and didn't call when he got back, which I knew only because Arnie reported it. I told Arnie about this, knowing he'd mention it to Bob, but I didn't get ANY call from Bob, so I was determined that he would NOT see "Runner Stumbles" when Arnie got out of it, since Arnie wasn't going to tell him about it. So the first time I saw him (without knowing he was going to be there), was at Guy's party on Friday, and then he said he'd like to have an orgy, but didn't want to stay, and complained when I told him there WAS one. I said it served him right. Then he was there Saturday, permitting me to do him, but Arnie came into Pope's to announce that he'd said he wouldn't do it AGAIN for another 200 years, which is a nice thing to say to someone who obviously gave him great pleasure cock-wise. Then Arnie said that he'd given---forget the name of the guy in the building---someone Michael's name to get him a charter to London, which the charter organization called Michael to say they had to bump him, and Michael refused, so they called him on Monday and he had to get a regular BOAC flight on Tuesday. So he didn't think of me AGAIN, and that's just about the end of it. He's not doing anything about getting a job: talking to Arnie, who says he refuses to talk about finances, Arnie said that he must be getting money from home, possibly as Christmas presents, and that he was rather expecting his father to die and leave him enough money to start his own business, which is a lousy way to plan your life. He refuses to put himself out to the "devastating" tricks that he meets (though every time I see the potty number in the back garage-yard and think of how he raved about HIM, I wonder about the quality of his other people), is making a total mess of his life by living in an expensive apartment that he has no idea how to share with others, and comes up with NO ideas about what to do. Though I may have said this before (and still think he's good in bed), I just can't imagine having much more to do with the clunk named Bob G.
DIARY 11147
8/8/76
MONEY TALK WITH DENNIS AFTER LITTLE KITCHEN
He agreed that I should talk to Catherine and Ellen and Michael and Paul about their $10 (and we tacitly let it be that Stephen took Ricka's part), but he balked about my calling Andrea, George, Frank, Guy, Rhea, Lynn, and Stephen about the extra $2 for the wine. But I said it was the principle of the thing, and that he was confusing MY mistake in not getting the price clear with HIS telling his friends that the $10 included everything. The extra money was a FACT---though he COULD have said that he thought I should pay for my mistake if in fact that's what he thought!---and the people who were responsible for it should PAY it. At one point he got ANGRY with me (for the first time) and said, "Goddammit, you're so sure you're right, you're so inflexible, that nothing I say is going to change you one DAMN bit." I was taken aback by this show of emotion, and was sorry that I'd gotten him to that point, but then a few seconds later, out of nowhere, he said "I'd just wanted to make them a GIFT of the wine," and I said "FINE, but now permit me to call them and TELL them that the wine was your gift," and then he boggled over something, and I crowed that I'd just PROVED that I wasn't all that inflexible, and even he could see the humor of it. We both thought that my driving him to the point of anger, for the first time, was a good thing, not least because we were talking about nice-nice people who never got angry when they SHOULD, and he proved he wasn't one of those. So he figured out that he owed me $15 for wine, that I should call the others, whose phone numbers he gave me, and that he would even mention it to Andrea, since he had to talk to her the next day. Then we smoked and had sex and went to bed. The next day, the first person I called for the $2 was Guy, and HE said that he OFTEN invited choir to his place and blew $50 on booze, and that was a TRADITION to thank friends for coming to see them perform. I lamely argued that it was his BIRTHDAY, but then he said that surely I had taken people out on MY birthday to spread the celebration, and I had to admit that I did, that he was right, and then called Dennis and told HIM that, and we all ended up feeling good about the whole damned thing.
DIARY 11174
8/16/76
GUY'S PROBLEMS
He'd cancelled a date with Rhea one weekend, something he'd never done before, and said he'd rather not see Dennis that weekend either, saying that he might stop seeing the BOTH of them COMPLETELY. This worried Dennis, since he'd just come OUT for the past two years, thanks to the influence of Dennis, and now he seems to want to be BACK INSIDE himself "Jerking off is fun, but not ALL the time" as he was before, but Dennis didn't know what to do about it. He's tried to break off once before with Rhea because the relationship wasn't "going anywhere," but she insisted she didn't WANT it to go anywhere, wasn't interested in marriage, so she resumed seeing him. I said two things: that GUY might decide to break off the relationships, but that they two could CONTINUE them, AND that Guy might decide that now and change his mind LATER. Dennis said that he was going through a particularly rough time now: his mother was very sick, almost dying, and had to keep going into the hospital, which depressed him; and his wife was getting more and more bitchy about letting his sons come up to see him in the city; but I suggested that since they were 12 and 14 and she KNEW he was gay, she was rather justifiably concerned about his influence over them, particularly when he kept expressing desires to initiate them into SEX with men himself! She could probably see that and it drove her crazy. I also remember that he'd wondered if he shouldn't quit the library business and go into personal management or public relations or something, but now he wants to devote himself to his job and make a name for himself THAT way, but Dennis didn't see him as Marion the Librarian living his entire life in the library. He was willing to continue his jerk-off friends, but I suggested that they were all relationships that weren't threatening to get more involved. He later said Guy was even jealous of Dennis's relationship with RICK that took some of his time away from Guy. He didn't care for me anymore, saying he couldn't even trust my FRIENDS such as Paul B. and Bob G., BECAUSE they were my friends, and he didn't "understand" me. I asked if he thought I could do anything, and he said no, as I'd thought: I was the enemy, to be shunned. I almost dropped up to see him on Thursday, but didn't, and Dennis said that Guy's friend Doris would be back next week, and Rhea was on vacation, so he had really no one to CONFIDE in who was objective -- he wanted THAT muchly.
DIARY 11184
8/16/76
OMER V.
French, but born in Vermont where his parents had moved from Canada, he was third in a family of 10, the 4 older of whom were NOT married and the 6 younger WERE. He lived with his older brother and sister and had since the brother had been asked to care for a house on the Island, the sister's roommate had left town and SHE moved in, and then HIS roommate at work had gotten married and HE had to get a new place. The brother did most of the cooking except for Friday, when the sister cooked fish. He was amazed that I'd told my friends and relations about my gayness, assuming that my Catholic 50s upbringing was the same as his. He stated a number of times that "I'd die," if anyone found out he was gay, even though he told a number of amusing stories: the woman at work who tried to get him together with her gay boyfriend, the beauty at work who keeps talking about his tolerance of a "friend" that's gay, and the "Are you lonely?" question of a pair of gays in his army unit, where he was a translator. He said that he fell in and out of love quickly, that he was sure his family didn't know about him (but Rick said he'd met the family and was sure they DID know), and that he never went to the bars for fear of meeting someone he knew. He only knew he was gay at 25, then never admitted it to anyone else, saying that his friends always used phrases like "Yes, he's nice, but he's one of THOSE," and "Let's go beat up faggots." He seemed frankly not to believe my reporting that Norma was envious of gays' freedom, easy sexuality, underground linkages, and baths and bars as meeting places. He told of travel incidents where the bedmate and he both creamed their jeans and "didn't know how it had happened," and when another fellow apologized for waking on TOP of him, Omer said he hadn't felt a thing. I SIMPLE DIDN'T BELIEVE IT, as I didn't believe it when he said that he was quite happy with his closeted life. He kept talking about how old he was, but he graduated college in 1957; Rick said that SONNY described people by their HAIR, Dennis by their minds, and Rick by their bodies, and someone else by their cocks and crotch sizes. I just listened, and Dennis later said that he loved me because my head was so MUCH more together than the heads of many of the gays he'd recently met. Indeed!
DIARY 11319
9/29/76
DENNIS LEARNING INDEXING
He's saying how he might have to take some other kind of job to make enough money to live on, and I say "Have you ever thought of learning indexing?" He says, to my surprise and pleasure at his forbearance, that he had. I ask him what he knows about indexing as it is, and he chose the lemon bread that we were eating to say that this could get a SEE under desserts, a cross-reference to "tea cakes" which I thought was nice, and a listing under lemon and a listing under bread and cake. That showed an admirable sense of exhaustiveness, and I said that if I got another book from Dennis Sillari from Harper and Row it would be a good one for him to start on. Then, when I was showering, the idea of a commission came to me, and I was playing with the idea of his giving 10% to ME when we eat in restaurants, and his spending his OWN 10%, but that might be a bit MUCH, particularly if he got a book like I get for $2000, which would leave us $400 for eating, MORE than enough for the Palace and a few OTHERS beside. But then I asked him how much agents got, and he said that AGENTS only got 10%, but that Personal Managers got 15%, so I said that was fine, that 7.5% would come to me in food, and he'd have to spend 7.5% on himself at the same time. So if he got a $120 job, as my last one was, it could pay for a $9 meal for me and a $9 meal for him at someplace nice like Le Beaupere or La Chaumiere. Since that would be about the SMALLEST job he'd ever get, it boded fair for the future. He said that he could type about 40-50 words per minute, relied on accuracy more than speed, realized when he made mistakes, and he seemed comfortable at my typewriter---and it would be a nice excuse to get him over HERE a bit more, using it as an office, which would prompt me to work with more industry, too. If I'm going to be getting more of the big ones from Appleton, it would be nice to have someone around to go with the little ones, and then I could check his editing, making more suggestions until he got the knack of it, sending them out as MINE until he got established, and then maybe letting him go off on his own with a nice way of making large amounts of money and STILL leave him free time for acting.
DIARY 11328
10/1/76
DENNIS'S LOVABLENESS
He keeps telling me things with such self-effacement that I want to hold him like he'd want to hold the Minnie Downs mice, to say that all's all right. He collected matchbooks as a kid, scrounging in the gutters for the colorful pieces of paper, and his brother made fun of him mercilessly. To display his precious collection he laboriously stapled two sheets of scrapbook paper together, slit them so that the covers would fit THROUGH the slits, displaying 24 on a sheet and 24 on the other---the collection is still in San Diego. One year he and his brother decided they HAD to have them along on their yearly trip from the south to visit relatives in North Dakota, and his father was amazed to see the collection of cigar boxes in the trunk when it was too late to turn back and leave them off. Dennis pantomimed perfectly his small seven-year-old self tugging at his father's jacket to get him to ask for matches from whatever motel he was paying the bill at. "But, Della," he would protest to his wife, "I don't even SMOKE," but Dennis said he'd DO it just for the sake of his younger son. Leroy would want the whole back seat to himself, and he'd complain bitterly, "Not only do I have to sit in the back with all this junk, but I have to sit in the back with HIM." Dennis said that his mother would take more and more under her feet in the front seat until her knees would be up to her chin, and then eventually DENNIS would end up sitting over the hump, leaving his brother to lord it over the back. He'd previously described the pitiful ruses that he'd use to make his parents take him to the movies when he was a kid who wouldn't understand that they really didn't have the MONEY for this sort of thing, trying to explain how it would actually SAVE them money in some way if they DID go to the show. He acted out the part of this small, intelligent, wanting, loving child so completely that I could see him yearning outward for love, and I'd want to put my arms around him and say that he'd found comfort and security and love at last. He spoke of the bargain in apricots, so his mother canned dozens of jars of preserved apricots and they'd have them for YEARS, as well as the STRINGIEST green beans which they'd have to eat because they were cheaper.
DIARY 11360
10/20/76
THE AMAZING TREAT OF WORKING WITH DENNIS
Every question is preceded by a hope that he's not disturbing me, every answer is accompanied with a show of affection: a tweak of the cock, a kiss, an extended (and sometimes extendING) embrace, and everything is done in such great good-feelings that I can't help but think how it differs from how I worked with John, who was always very tense, one-tracked so he didn't like to be disturbed, and easily driven to feeling frustrated or angry or ill-used. Dennis, on the other hand, just keeps asking about what's troubling him, reading sentences that amuse him (to the point that I'm about ready to tell him to stop---when I DO say, with only somewhat feigned exasperation, "It seems that you're asking more questions with the second index than you did with the FIRST," he responds by saying that he's going so much FASTER on the second index that he's hitting the questions SOONER.), and keeps coming back for more, except the other night, when he has to ADMIT that he's becoming crabby, then STILL in such a lovable manner that I can only SEE how troubled he's being and search for some way to let him STOP and relax for a bit. There's none of the "You HAVE to do this" that so irritated me with my mother; there seems to be none of the boss-employee anger between me and Dennis, since he knows that I'm telling him what to do as a FRIEND and not as a boss. It actually ADDS to my life to be with him, looking at indexing for the first time, again, and I feel so pleased that I practically GLOW through the days that he's working with me. I can sit and watch him typing as I'm watching TV, and he agonizes over everything being just right, retyping many pages when I probably would have just edited, groaning and spitting our curses when his fingers hit the wrong keys, AND agonizing over the lighter commas. If only more people could work like this---and it's not ONLY that we love each other: we also respect each other as people, respect each other's knowledge and suggestions on a PROFESSIONAL, not on a personal basis, and want to do things in the best way possible. And NOW I'm delighted with the fact that the LAST Harper index will be ready next week, hopefully AFTER Dennis has finished his work with Andrea.
DIARY 11433
11/15/76
MICHAEL'S PAST
He wants to take acid and asks if I had any experience with it, so I give him a rundown on my trips OVER 10 YEARS AGO, and ask if he'd had any sort of breakdown. He tells me a horrible story about how depressed he was when he was 17, so much so that he was hospitalized, and when they said that electroshock treatments would be good for him, he TOOK them. He'd had a very sad childhood, he said, and even now he's not sure about what voices are telling him that "he doesn't like to go to bed with men." I said that I'd had some experiences of feeling NOT WITH someone, and not being aroused, and making excuses, blaming it on myself. Then I said that I'd also known what it was like to feel VERY close to someone, and not feeling aroused, and blaming myself for it taking one of TWO tacks: saying "I love you so much that I don't feel excited with you," which I said tended to be a cop-out: the thing to SAY is "I don't feel sexy at this point, why don't we just cuddle?" He seemed to agree that HE could identify with the feeling of being self-conscious, bringing someone down. I also asked if it was HE who was saying that, or someone from his past, and he called me his psychiatrist and said that he didn't know, but that he'd look at it when it came up again. I also suggested that it might be something he didn't like doing, and he said that didn't seem to be a problem, he only did what he liked, and he was rather into the fist-fucking scene, which turned him on, though he agreed that too often the person who was being fucked ACTED like he was enjoying it but didn't appear to be PHYSICALLY TURNED ON by it. Then he admitted to a history of rather short affairs, with nothing lasting over a very long period of time. Then he talked about getting a $75-dollar-a-month raise, but acting as manager of the office when the last guy they hired for the job messed up. Also, he still hadn't got his green card, but his lawyer is writing congressmen claiming that he's been dealt an INJUSTICE for not being told he didn't have to apply in "category six" which was actually DISBANDED. He and Mary have almost found an office, except that neither wants to live in the apartment behind it. Things appear to be moving for him.
DIARY 11564
1/12/77
DENNIS'S TRIP TO HAWAII
He met his friend from Riverside Drive, going to Los Angeles on the same plane, and he even played with him under the blanket after they watched "The Shootist" on the 747. They spent lots of time on Oahu, touring shopping centers and going to good restaurants like Horatio's for abalone and lobster and other goodies, with lots of different fruits native to the islands. On Maui they toured the whole place, from the Banyan tree in Lahaina to the Seven Pools at the end of the winding road to Hana, to the Iao needle. Kauai they seemed to have missed the ends of: got to the "South Pacific" cove on the north without getting to Poipu, and he had trouble remembering if they stopped at Waimea or continued to the overlook over Kalalau. Most of the islands they took tours, particularly on Hawaii, where a native Hawaiian charmed them with his anecdotes, easy way of living, and enthusiasm. He showed them the northern part of the island in detail, Dennis loved the desolation walk, and saw a number of black-sand beaches. He found it a kick traveling with his aunts and uncles and parents, except for the time in Waikiki when he went to buy postcards and ended in the baths. He'd done a few other things in a few other places, bettering John's and my record by quite a bit. He loved the colors of the water, but hardly went swimming at all, spending most of the time on tours. He raved about the Fern Grotto, which they liked so much they went again in the day after seeing it first at night. They laughed at the giant-clam sinks at the motel, were irritated by the incessant singing of someone there, but he loved the luxury of staying in an expensive place, enjoying the buffets for most of the meals, and even the laugh of his father's getting annoyed at the free drinks, the man who knocked to turn down the beds after they were asleep by 9 pm, and the ticky-tacky architecture. He liked the chance to talk with his relatives, enjoyed the visit of his brother and his new girlfriend, and talked with him but not with his parents about his sexuality. He wasn't terribly enthusiastic about going back another time, but I figured that if we were even in the neighborhood it wouldn't be hard to convince him to stay for another week, OUR way.
DIARY 11617
2/5/77
IMPROMPTU SEX WITH DENNIS
I'm working on the plants in the living room when Dennis comes up behind me to give me a hug, fresh from the shower. Before long, it becomes clear that he's not what anyone would call soft, and I grab him and turn around to his beaming face, saying without words "There's nothing I can do about it, but I'm glad you like it." He says it's clean, but I say that I'm Rhoda and have to give it a few last licks, so I go at it tentatively, but he pulses and shoves himself in, and it's obvious that something's going to happen. I'm sitting on the chair in the corner (and outside viewers may have had a ball and a SIGHT of a balling, too!), and he quickly climbs up, stuffing his knees into what I hope was a comfortable position, and shoves his cock to the hilt down my throat. Sore though it is, his cock is SO hard and SO willing that it's impossible to resist. Draw it out (thankfully my gums have improved so they're not bleeding ALL the time I suck on him) and look at the INCREDIBLE amount of juice that it produces---a glistening thick glob at every squeeze, that slides voluptuously down the cock-slit until it reaches the folds of his foreskin, which he enjoys keeping up around the sensitive edge of his cock, and then furnishes lubrication for the remaining action. In and out of my mouth it goes, getting harder and redder, and I'm quite hot, as he can feel when he settles back on my lap. I'm content that he shoot on my old blue pullover, but he has other ideas, grunting out "Suck cock, suck cock," and pulsing so importunately that I figure he CAN come in my mouth, but I still perversely want to stretch it out, put it back, play with it, look at his gleeful face, watch the spasms of the joyful cock, and at last he's shoving my head down on his cock, saying "I'm going to shoot into your mouth, I'm going to come in your mouth," and then he does that, thrusting fully and slowly while I and he enjoy every second of it, and then he collapses down on my lap as I continue working around him as he softens, getting every last bit of his juice, and then we laugh and talk about it, and I lick up one last bit so that he can taste ("Salty, isn't it?"), and then we're back to what we had PLANNED to do with our time, and I keep telling us that we're among the LUCKIEST people there could ever be: having found each other in this world that unaccountably gives VERY short shrift to the pleasures to sheer COCK.
DIARY 11622
2/8/77
DENNIS AND I TALK ABOUT MY LEISURE TIME
He starts me off by talking about his feeling unfulfilled because he isn't giving himself fully in the field of acting. I get Teilhard's quotation that impressed me so much when I read it today (P. 40 of "Letters to Two Friends": "It seems to me that a whole lifetime of effort would be nothing if only I could reveal for one instant what I see."). I said that my writing served as my "aim" in life, and that TO write I felt that I should ABSORB as much as I could in my lifetime. This quickly led to my talking, again, about why I was reluctant to go to plays that I didn't particularly want to see: I'd JUDGE whether it would be worth my time, and if it didn't seem to be different enough, spectacular enough, or "rich enough" I didn't care for it. I got into, more clearly than ever before, my philosophy about watching the "investment" the others put into something: I'd far rather SEE something that THOUSANDS of people devoted themselves to rather than to see something that only ONE person devoted himself to. Historically, that was reflected in my wanting to see the "most-seen plays" and read the "most-read books," because then I would in some way SHARE in the efforts and talents and people-hours that went into both PRODUCING what I was watching or WATCHING the same thing that I was watching. I didn't express very well the feeling that not only did I think that I WAS those other people, but I wanted to FEEL what they felt, SEE what they saw, KNOW what they knew, to know more about THEM, and in that way more about myself. So I'd rather go to an opera that's been seen by millions, produced by hundreds, and attended that night by thousands than watch an improvisation by one person that will never be the same from one night to the next, watched by a few dozen people. There isn't much HUMANITY, much EFFORT, much INVESTMENT represented by that sort of performance, unless the person is a real genius whose work represents thousands of days of HIS work or of work filtered through his MASTERS. Perhaps that's why ethnic dance has such a great appeal for me: there is the feeling that THIS dance was watched in very much this way over a period of thousands of years (to music heard for the same lengths of time), by people THROUGH time, from the first performance through the present. And that's a marvelous sweep of "investment" to partake of. I didn't go any farther and explain my "multidimensional contact" theories: that my contact with a certain mudra, for example, would in some sense, in some dimension, connect me with ALL examples of that mudra, connecting me very tenuously with all the WATCHERS and people TEACHING and PERFORMING that mudra. Just as there's ONE dimension for "Longitude 53 degrees east" and latitude 47 degrees north (around Dosser in Kazakh, as it turns out) has another, so there's a dimension of dozens of other things that are connected in some way, or they wouldn't be the same things. That was ONE facet of what I saw and didn't see. I DID, however, use my own taste and know that I enjoyed Maurice Bejart, even though some dance critics chose not to care for him, and I liked Diane Boardman enough to see her whenever she appears, and now Robert Small is to my liking also. But just because everyone says I SHOULD like Merce Cunningham doesn't mean that I DO. So with the urge for spectacle (it takes more people to make a spectacle than it does to make an ordinary performance), for "investment," for historicity, I still have my favorites that DON'T appeal to me for those reasons. We talked about how I wanted to feel that my "entertainments" were "relevant," not merely "empty entertainment," to give myself a feeling of "doing something" with my life. I read for the same reason, watch TV for the same reason, and go to movies for the same reason, though that doesn't mean that I can't be intrigued for ANOTHER reason. Sadly, I felt, for those reasons, that I didn't do things ONLY to "relax" or ONLY to "fill my leisure time," and that meant that even things that I ENJOYED (which is not to say I don't enjoy clicking off syllabic intensities or finishing indexes) doing, I did with a certain sense of "ought to" about it---and I rarely do things "just for the hell of it." All these contribute to my not caring for jazz and rock (unless stoned, when a DIFFERENT set of guidelines apply), while I care more for ballet and opera, though I don't care to see MANY operas twice, which explains why I don't GO so much; though "Mefistofeles" and "Carmina Burana" are great favorites. It's not all SEX, either, though that's a large part: BALLERINAS can be appreciated in my framework, too!
DIARY 11656
2/25/77
TALK WITH DENNIS ABOUT JAZZ
He reads me a passage from "Jazz Is" that describes a "conversation" between two instruments, and I leap upon it as something that I don't care for about jazz; I'll go see a PLAY or a REHEARSED piece, but I wouldn't pay money and take my time with the listening of a conversation between people I've never heard speaking before (though I'd gladly pay to hear John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, and John Barth discuss writing, however). He mentions that I've enjoyed performances in the past; I reply that that doesn't mean that the WHOLE of jazz is pleasant, or that he won't have to twist my arm for the next one. After a lengthy conversation (that I DID like to listen to), it came out that I was REALLY willing to go to jazz performances in order to SEE the different kinds of it and DECIDE that it wasn't any good. That implied two things: that if I saw four or five performances that I didn't care for, I was entitled to think the WHOLE of jazz would not please me, rather than taking the position ABOVE with LIKING it that it would NOT apply to the whole field of jazz, just as some of the poor DANCE performances I've seen don't turn me off the field of dance; indeed poor dance performances BY A GROUP (such as Stuttgart's "Carmen," of NYC Ballet's new "Fanfare" or Feld's "Real McCoy") don't even turn me off THAT GROUP, whereas I'd CERTAINLY decide that if I didn't care for, say, the MJQ THIS time that I'd never have to go back to them. It hit me like a load: I was trying in every way I could think of to MINIMIZE jazz as a field of art. Thanks to my feeling for history and the amount of time and effort INVESTED in something, I said that I'd feel better if I knew that this was the START of a glorious history for jazz and that people in 2500 would be envying the lucky people who may have heard Stan Getz, Mabel Mercer, Bobby Short, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and dozens of others during the "Golden Age" of jazz. AND I would feel that MY position of not wanting to see them would be vindicated if 500 years from now jazz was only a footnote in the history of music. But nothing was said about the pleasure I got from it NOW, except that when others ENJOYED what I didn't care for, I kept wondering what they might KNOW or HAVE EXPERIENCED that put them in a position to appreciate what I couldn't even HEAR.
DIARY 11664
2/25/77
TALK WITH BOB R. ABOUT SPLIT
He'd first recovered in two weeks from his bad back, then got some kind of flu (HA! now that I've JUST watched "SST---Death Flight"!) for the rest of the month, and is just now catching up with things. I said I was going through a rather strange phase where Dennis was asking "Are you all right?" and he said that NINA had been asking him the same question at the same time. He couldn't talk over the office phone, but he said it was about the SPLIT that he'd talked about before, and I could only imagine it was between going to bed with Nina and going to bed with men. From the point of view of EXTERIOR happiness (as for ME), everything was going well with him: now that the whole family had had est, Nina and Alicia could run their tapes at each other and then THEY would realize it and get down to business, and HE could bow out of it and let them take care of it themselves. Alicia would send the boys she didn't like running away in confusion mainly by observing "You're not on purpose." She said they didn't understand, but they left her alone, and that was all she was concerned about. He was doing well in the job, as I was; so monetarily everything was fine. The relationships, at a certain level, were fine, as were mine. But I said that even though I might not have the SAME split as he did, I at least had the experience of working through (or learning to LIVE with) the SPLIT, which in MY case was the split (as mentioned to Bruce on DIARY 11663) between grabbing everything possible in this life, but getting the indications that the BEST of life could be gotten by VOLUNTARILY GIVING UP life itself, to attain whatever the REALITY of Nirvana is. HE might have a somewhat lesser split (he doesn't talk much about Seth anymore, but Bruce said that Seth was QUITE right about the speakers tutoring the inner self during the night while the mind and body slept) that I believe I have, but the thrill of "walking on the edge of the sword" over the abyss that EITHER side of the split offered was a unique experience to itself. He looked forward to getting together, but was so busy that he couldn't say when, so he just said he'd call me back, and I hoped Dennis would fit in (when I asked him if he wanted to be part of it, he said yes, so it's up to him) without getting lost in the "unity" that Bob and I have shared for so long it illumines our relationship no matter NOW seldom we see each other. But, I think, it DOES depend on a CERTAIN distance!
DIARY 11668
2/26/77
POPE AND HIS CHAIN LETTERS
He said if it wasn't THREE pages of hard-sell ("Do unto others; give with one hand and take in with two ("Do you have to have THREE hands for that?"); God always says yes; prosper others and they will prosper you") he'd send out a lot of them, and I laughed at his, yes, stupidity and said he was bringing more PAIN into the world, and he couldn't understand it, though he'd take the first step and admit that he'd be totally responsible for the pleasure or pain that the people to whom HE sent the letter would experience from it. He condemned the ones that said "someone broke the chain and had VERY bad luck" and admitted it depended on everyone using and completing the chain which would very quickly include everyone in the world, but he kept going at it from the point of view of a GAMBLE: where you KNOW you might lose all your money, but I didn't stress the point ENOUGH that EVERY gambler, SOMEWHERE, hopes that THIS will be the time that he WILL hit it big, and that every time he DOESN'T makes him just slightly more desperate and slightly more cynical about his fellow humans ever ASSISTING him in getting rich. He can't expect EVERYONE to be as willing to lose as he is, and he's STILL confident he'll make money from it without THINKING that the people on the bottom will actually REGRET having sent more than they've received. Then he started READING this one and we LAUGHED at the ludicrously worded phrases (good customers are secretaries who have access to duplicating machines). Send out as many as you want. I AGREED that the way to REALLY make money was to START one, before it petered out; HE'D wanted to start one, and he roundly CONDEMNED my idea of the "four winners? $1000 lets you see the rest" as fraud without seeing that THIS was an EQUAL fraud. I DID, at the end, ask for a copy for my files, since it seemed like a VERY funny one, but I doubt he'll go through the trouble of reproducing it at ALL. It just heightens the bad karma of people expecting something that they're not going to get THIS time, so they'll have to come back to get it some SUBSEQUENT time. I made the CLEAR point that I scarcely knew people on these lists because my GOOD friends knew me well enough to know I'd never keep the chain, so I only got them from STUPID friends who had friends that I didn't care to know.