1978
Wednesday January 11
8:00 p.m.
San Francisco
Dear, dear, Deidre,
Back again. Today I wandered. I was delirious. The weather here was 70 F., I was in shirtsleeves squinting into the sun, incredulous that it was actually January. I feel so lightheaded because of the weather. I knew there were places on the globe that enjoyed freedom from slush, wind, and frostbite, but it never occurred to me I would ever be a part of their hedonistic escapism. But here I am in January, in shirtsleeves, being assaulted by a beautiful mild breeze all afternoon.
I walked for miles.
Through Chinatown, down Polk St. (gay), along Post, over to Castro (gay) down to 24th St. (bohemian) and hopped on a Church St. streetcar for a glorious ride over hills affording a view of the entire city and bay.
I felt a completely undeserved happiness.
The only thing that served to sour any of this was my strange obsession with the possibility of an earthquake. I don’t understand why this is. But I would be strolling along watching people talking and laughing and I would think ‘how unsuspecting they all are.’ In various parts of town I would imagine how safe or unsafe I would be if the catastrophe hit now. Lately my mind has adopted a taste for the macabre.
I’m afraid that I’m slipping into my old habits immediately, sleeping in until noon or thereabouts. Frittering away an afternoon. Movies at night. It’s enjoyable at first but a life of it wears on you. It’ll wear on me particularly quickly because there is no definite end to that limbo this time. I mean there are no external situations apparent that make my stay here temporary. It seems that I’ve got my old job back at the theater when I get around to going over and making enquiries.
Love, George
Thursday February 2
Montgomery St.
San Francisco
Four o’clock in the afternoon
Dear Deidre,
It’s tea-time, letter-time, toast-time and certainly high-time I directed my dissipated energies towards a response to your last letters. I re-read them at least twice sometimes thrice in order to soak up the detail.
In fact only last night I was buried in their ink searching for street references.
I follow your routes in pencil and ‘X’ all the places you mention being. This gives me unspeakable vicarious pleasure. At times my heart aches to be there with you and San Francisco dulls by comparison.
The day before receiving your letter mentioning Sylvia Beach, I was taking in the spring-like night air of downtown San Francisco. I happened by a beautiful antiquarian bookshop just off Union Square, a shop I’d managed never to see before.
In the window was this huge blue-paperbound edition of Ulysses. Very plain. It had a central position in the window’s display and was obviously a prize. I then thought I recalled in the Cerf book his anecdotes concerning Joyce. He mentions that at one time you could only get Ulysses, banned for obscenity everywhere else, at Sylvia Beach’s bookshop, Shakespeare & Co., on the Left Bank.
It mentions they sold for ten dollars and were bound in blue – Columbia blue – paper. That phrase stuck in my mind. I followed it up by checking with a copy of his At Random in a bookstore that happened to be open that time of night. I was right. The blue Ulysses in the window must be a Sylvia Beach. Next day I went down and enquired if it was. Yes. Published under the colophon of Shakespeare & Co. in 1922 with a printing of 1000 copies. There is a publisher’s preface by S.B. Out of interest I asked after its price. One thousand dollars. A hot item.
It’s now noon, Friday. Tomorrow evening Carlos and I are supposed to go to a party at Gao’s to celebrate Chinese New Year. This is the Year of the Horse; I believe it’s 4676. I’ve just risen from the darkness of the tomb, as the bedroom is affectionately called. It’s riddled with things Egyptian, mostly aped Tutankamania easily come by these days due to the rage currently sweeping the States because of the exhibition of the treasures from Tut’s tomb.
In another of my perambulations along Union St., I happened into a bookstore. Here flipping through a book on modern architecture I came across pictures of the exterior of the Pompidou Centre.
Your descriptions though good did not prepare me for the façade they had photographed. I’ll admit to being taken aback by the bared functionalism of pipes and trusses and what have you. The height and even visual liveliness of the exterior may be in keeping with les edifices Parisien which surround it, but the philosophy is completely opposed. You can’t even say it has a façade anymore. Because it doesn’t hide anything. It’s like a huge centrifuge threw everything to the periphery leaving the insides pure and uncompromised space.
The photographs even managed to show the escalators you went up and the view from the top looking towards Sacre Coeur.
They didn’t show anything of the square where you describe so much colorful activity taking place. On the map the Place out front looks as large in area as the building itself. A well thought of aspect from the visual point of view. So many beautiful buildings of large proportion are lost to the eye because of their position on relatively narrow streets where attention is directed down the vista of the street, not to what you’re passing. This is in part what I prefer about European cities or European-looking cities. Even highly boulevarded Paris. For here they don’t continue on endlessly but come to an appreciable stop at a place where their period is perhaps a church, a public building, a fountain, a column or an arch. And whatever acts as the terminus of the street not only benefits the pedestrian’s psychology but also is benefited by virtue of being shown to advantage.
Motherfucking son-of-a-bitch, piss, shit, fuck. It’s Saturday noon now and once again I’ve just gotten up. Carlos is in bed though awake. In fact we’ve both been awake and fuming since 8:40 this morning when our roommate, Craig, began to play insipid disco music very loud. I was in fact not awakened by it until Carlos nudged me and asked why Craig had to play his records so loudly, but thereafter their drone precluded rest.
Craig has been an absentee boarder here lately. He has struck up a relationship with a fellow across the Bay and spends most of his time over there now. I like Craig, but for me he often typifies the essential American. Loud, opinionated, grating. At times all I want to do is find solace in silence. So his absence has not gone unappreciated at times. It’s gray outside but not dark. Over some tea I’m listening to the quiz from the Metropolitan Opera broadcast which is taking place between the second and third acts of Verdi’s Othello, being performed live this afternoon over the waves.
You’ll never believe this. It is seven in the morning Sunday February 5th. I honestly cannot recall the last time I saw an early morning in the city. It’s dull and has been raining so it’s no great treat. I’ve only had three hours of fitful sleep and I’ll probably collapse like France in 1940 after a few more hours of activity.
Happy New Year.
I’m always apprehensive about large gatherings of strangers I’ve obligated myself to go to. Last night was no exception and, as is always the case, the reality of the party was nothing to be anxious over. Things were not terribly lively, it consisted in the main of about 30 strangers (to me), remaining so while we spent hours eating this enormous quantity
of exquisite food, Gao, by some Herculean effort, had managed to prepare. During the course of the soirée Gao and a friend he introduced me to were overtly affectionate with me publicly. That is, a touch too tactile. Which is okay with me but didn’t sit well with Carlos. Understandable. He would never say anything though, he only became much quieter and avoided eye contact with me. So I came over and spent the rest of our stay observing the goings on from the area around his feet. This was the right thing to do and I was perfectly amenable to it. But I found as we talked about jealousies, my conversation became progressively more bilious with regard to William. The punch I was drinking was fully agreeable with me on the subject of Carlos’ ex-lover and current quasi-confidant. It must have been the hostility I had been holding in reserve through a façade of genuinely attempted understanding.
Sunday night, 8:00 p.m. We’ve just returned from Star Wars which I’ve just recently read is sold out for months in advance in London. It isn’t anything the mob has cracked it up to be. The effects are undoubtedly well done, though what do I know of effects? The story is unoriginal melodrama with all the subtlety of Trish preparing for another faux pas.
It may interest you to know that Jim Shelton visited us about two weeks ago. Before I left this last time he mentioned coming out to inquire about film courses – the cinema, he believes, is his métier – perhaps in February. Then I am here four days and he’s calling me from Los Angeles. I didn’t mind him journeying up here but he didn’t know I was gay at that point and quarters
are so cramped here it would be difficult to feign an unhomosexual relationship within the apartment. If conversational matter didn’t give it away, nor the nudes adorning Craig’s wall, then the deduced sleeping arrangements – one double bed for Carlos and I – would have. It took me his entire first evening to work around to it but once told he wasn’t surprised and acclimatized himself to the situation rapidly. He was full of a healthy curiosity – I am looked upon as a trustworthy liaison officer.
As always, his attention was mainly centered on himself, but not arrogantly, just blindly. He’s the first to laugh when I wryly point it out to him. I also find his unmasked avarice, his, again, admitted avarice, a little shocking but mostly tiresome. He’s very opinionated about movies, don’t ever ask for a critique. There are times when a certain smugness in his intelligence and academic finesse leads to a savagely puerile sarcasm unalleviated by wit – and THAT is inexcusable in my books. These faults, if faults they be, are irritating sometimes but it remains that the boy is no fool and understands these aspects of himself or rather understands they exist. Though prone to exaggeration he is sincere and accepting of criticism. He knows when he’s being a fool and that is a quality I prize. I can talk to him easily and confidentially and can laugh in his company. I like him. He feels easy with me.
Tuesday February 7th, 11:00 a.m. Gun hay fat choy, that is Happy New Year á la Chinoiserie. Finally, finally, 4676 is here. I’m not making any resolutions for this equine annum as I am by nature a totally irresolute person.
Kettle’s boiling. Something 19th century and French, I believe, is coming across KKHI. The sky is hesitating between cloud and sun. My apologies for taking so long on this damn thing. I had planned on finishing it last night but I became fidgety and instead inked in and framed a sketch for you, which I pray is intact when it arrives.
It is a view of the University of San Francisco (that basilica-like thing and campanile) from a hill called Buena Vista. I sat perched above the Haight-Ashbury area drawing the distant scene. As you may notice it’s unfinished. But I thought this added a mysterious, and certainly blank, quality. A little something to brighten the room.
You may be interested – in a purely intellectual vein of course – in what elements of San Francisco bizzarerie I have been
investigating lately. One late Saturday night while Carlos was at his studio, Gao and I took wing. We happened to pass the South of Market Club, a private club of seedy appearance. The south of Market area is rather rundown and sordid, a lively sordidness, not desolate though.
Pawnshops, used furniture stores, peep-shows, leather bars, gay baths, etc. Most of the non-gay establishments are the types of places you’d expect to find the smell of dried urine in if you know what I mean. The gay places have too much money coming in not to be well kept; but the area provides them with the atmosphere they want, and if you ever come across the smell of dried urine in one of these places you can almost bet it came from an aerosol can.
We had heard of the South of Market before but weren’t sure what it was. Membership turned out to be $1.50 and entrance the same, so we gave it a shot. We were buzzed in the electrically locked door. The place consisted of a two-story high, darkened room of a good size. Three aisles ran its length, each of these lined with wooden cubicles. In all there were perhaps fifty or more of these mock toilets. Each abutted at least three others and in the partition which they shared were holes, crotch-height about six inches in diameter. Some cubicles were well-lit, others almost pitch dark. Some had a little wooden stool, others empty. All of them could be locked but many a time when Gao and I (together and giggling like school girls, urging one another to “come and look at this”) would open a door to find someone masturbating or peering through a hole to see what was happening next door. Or there would be a body, quite naked, flush against a wall, writhing with his back to us. Getting a blow job, we supposed, through the hole.
In holes we looked through, our eyes were sometimes assailed with threesomes, mere twosomes, cocks stuck through neighbor’s holes, other eyes peering at you to see if you weren’t Quasimodo. In the aisles people walked around fully clothed, checking one another out, watching where the attractive boys disappeared. And surprisingly there were a number of very attractive people; I say surprisingly because somehow those darkened dens of iniquity conjure up those weather-beaten, liquor-sodden, unintelligible creeps that I stupidly associate with toilets. Not handsome, trim figures in Pierre Cardin turtlenecks. It seems that all types get off on “glory holes” as they’re called.
Outside of that adventure, from whence I escaped untouched (Gao too), my life has been tame. Movies. Carlos loves movies. His life vacillates between dancing, eating, television, and movies. If I drill deep enough he is knowledgeable and interested in a number of things but most of the time it is the Carlos of dance and films that I’m living with. Not a bad thing.
One twenty p.m. Thursday February 9th. Again, I just got up. Coffee, no tea, this morning. News about the East dragging out from the worst snowstorm in history. A piano sonata on the radio. Heavier than normal traffic on Broadway. Light gray skies.
At this rate of writing I could continue ad infinitum just taking the previous day’s adventures as grist for today’s mill. Carlos has mentioned this already, shaking his head in disbelief at the length of the letter. I tried to explain that every detail and incident is not only recordable but can bring to the surface attitudes, philosophies, viewpoints and a world of other synonyms that we (you and I) want to hear from one another.
Things with Carlos are good. I am happy and content to be living with someone who adores me and wants me to be happy, wants me to be entertained, will do anything for me; with someone who loves me very much and is afraid of losing me. Since this relationship with Carlos began I have been overwhelmed by a desire to make it work, to try my best to understand his side of things and make allowances for our differences; not to look upon things as terminal the minute some difficulty arises then saying afterwards, “well I suppose that’s just the way things had to go, we weren’t suited to each other.”
The greatest contentment I’ve ever felt (as I recall) were times laying in one another’s arms, not doing anything in particular except being with one another. He attracts and excites me physically, certainly emotionally. He genuinely cares. I’m happy in his company, I like making him happy. He makes me feel secure. He is full of vitality and uncomplicated passion (in the broad sense of the word) that fascinates me and sweeps me along.
Carlos is 35. And although he neither looks it nor seems held in check by it, the fact remains that he is 35. Being a dancer he can see a finiteness to his career because of his age. And being homosexual, with each passing year the ability to compete with the young, tautly-muscled bodies around you becomes less and less. Unfortunately in the gay world there seems a great deal of stress laid on looks. That is why aging can appear to be so harrowing to some, especially to those who’ve spent their time thriving on being attractive, being “marketable.”
I am 22. Good-looking, slim. There is no reason why Carlos shouldn’t have felt (and maintains) an attraction for me, out of purely physical reasons. I think in those first days when the powerful emotional bond was formed, it was formed in the main because of these superficial qualities. The bond strengthened when we found genuine delight in one another’s company, found things we had in common, were touched by each other’s kindnesses, consideration or generosity.
I’ve just gone to have this thing weighed at the post office. $3.84. The fellow at the counter seemed a little put off when I asked for the amount in stamps instead of one of those receipts they stick on. He acted as though it were a real effort to look up 1.00, 50¢ and 30¢ denominations. Christ. You step out of the norm even minimally and you get martyrdom thrown at you.
You’ll notice that on the stamp dedicated to Eugene O’Neill (the one dollar which hardly anyone sees anyway) the postal authorities feel obliged to clarify his contribution to America with “Playwright.” O.K. Then who the hell is Lucy Stone, the formidable Miss Fifty Cents?
Or John Dewey? My guess would be he’s either the man who lost against Truman or a library cataloguer. But I’m not sure. And Lucy Stone sounds and looks like a suffragette, but I haven’t any idea. Eugene O’Neill I knew. I don’t understand it at all.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my father. I find myself incredulous that he is dead. The re-realization hits me like hammer blows each day. I can’t comprehend it any better now that it has struck me so close to home. What death is. Because what it means is an irretrievable absence. Death did not encompass the pain my father suffered or the sadness and fear he felt in the face of it. Death stopped all that; that was part of his life, not his death. But my father and death, his permanent absence from me, don’t seem right. I feel melancholy, I think, only as an associated attendant feeling with the very word death. But I’m not sure what to feel sorry about. Callously it seems (in that we’re supposed to pity the dead), according to my philosophy, I should accord all my pity and sorrow to my mother who sustains this loss as a part of her life and must live on despite the tragedy. Fuck it must be frightening.
I do feel for her very much particularly in light of having ‘lost’ me so soon after my father’s death thus leaving her even more alone to face the rest of her life. This is laying my mother quite low. She understands, or comprehends the outlines, but it cuts her deeply because I have left and by so doing let fall from her another part of her life, just as one disappeared from it forever when my father died. This is compounded by my having left to live with Carlos, which she is completely aware of, and knocked senseless by. It is doubly hard for her to face up to the fact that I’m living in a homosexual relationship because of the hurt she is already trying to bear.
Thinking about all this I was met with the vision of my own death. I saw again that my turn will come – probably of cancer – perhaps soon. And I’ll be gone. I’m not immortal, and by virtue of living I’m already inviting death. It rattled me like I haven’t been in a hell of a long time. Every once on a while my mortality is dumped on me like a ton of bricks and it depresses me only short of a proselytizing Jehovah’s Witness. But I’m alright now.
At 4:00 p.m. February 9th this is the final installment for this letter, initially begun almost a month ago now. Forgive me my procrastination, but your letters are sacred and their composition must be performed only after ablutions and genuflections of the proper order.
I love you E.D.P.,
George
Friday February 24
Broadway
San Francisco
10:00 p.m.
Deidre, Deidre, Deidre,
I had the sky fall in on me when I went to scribble those few lines on the last postcard to you. I happened to do it at dinner in a restaurant in Carmel. To me it seemed completely innocent, completely natural and completely in keeping with the evening. But to Carlos it seemed an unpardonable affront and just plain rude. I have no reservations in saying he is absolutely wrong. But I do understand that for him the evening was very special – he was off in a world of romance I wasn’t quite tuned into and when I took the opportunity of his absence in the bathroom to begin the card, I shattered his world of faery. I was flabbergasted when I finally got it out of him what was at the root of his sudden sourness. It seemed to come from nowhere. I was dumbfounded and furious that he thought of me as rude. I tried to explain my incredulity because of 1) the piddlingness of the incident, 2) I only even brought the thing out when a break occurred in the meal through his being in the can, and 3) the whole thing was prefaced by my mentioning to him before we went into the damn place that I was going to get the postcard out of the car to jot you a little something.
His bitterness and upset seemed to have no grounds whatsoever for these very reasons. It was such a trivial thing to argue over but it was really his attitude I was taking offence to. He is becoming far too sensitive about my every word and action. His jealousy of David is at fever pitch; he is very wary of Gao. I suppose he’s got some foundation for his insecurity in these cases because both have more or less professed, in words or actions, an attraction to me. But I’m not encouraging or reciprocating and I’m damned if I’m going to be the one to bear the responsibility for whatever licentious fancies tickle the minds of other people.
I felt so upset over that goddamn card (though I maintain I am in the undeniable right) that I couldn’t bring myself to write a letter
because of an unspoken fear that I was doing something spiteful and callous. I have since done away with that attitude. But good christ I’m getting tired of having to continually reassure and pacify.
(Continued)
Monday March 6
Montgomery St.
San Francisco
12:00 noon
Need I set the stage for you? I am at the kitchen table looking southwest to Broadway a few yards away. Carlos is asleep. The radio is classical. Water’s boiling for tea. Am I in a rut?
Early this morning David called. I received the call in bed in a semi-conscious state, trying to be as pleasant as possible through the grogginess. Every time I spoke I could smell the sickly, decomposing odor of my breath (it must have been unswallowed ham and refried beans from the night before) and this did nothing to add to the enjoyment of the conversation. At its close after a half hour, Carlos, from beneath an inundation of quilt, asked in an offhand way if I couldn’t take the phone into the kitchen when I got a call that early in the morning. In polite tones I told him to blow it out his ass and recalled for him the irritating regularity with which William would call him every morning while we were asleep and it never occurred to me to throw him out of bed in order to preserve my dreams.
I didn’t bother to bring up that there is no possible way I could have slept while he spoke to William, even after most of my jealousy had evaporated; I would wait like a circling vulture for the least innuendo. And god help him if he ever withdrew to another room to carry on his illicit dialogue. Conveniently setting these points aside, I said, besides you’re only pulling this bit about early phone calls because it’s David, not because it’s early phone calls. I think that by knowing thyself one often knows others. Not surprising I suppose considering we are all human beings; we do have a good deal in common with one another. Our backgrounds, our environments, our interests are fairly dissimilar, Carlos’ and mine, and yet our emotional make-up is quite the same.
I’ve relocated to Washington Square containing in its center, very appropriately, a statue of Benjamin Franklin. At times the sun is bright on the faded blue of my corduroy jacket. The benches are filled with quasi-derelicts. No real derelicts but the types that have taken bohemianism too far and can’t go back. Then there are aged Italian and Chinese locals which my bourgeois eye categorizes as outcasts though in fact they are probably leisurely patriarchs of great, extended families somewhere nearby.
I’ll just break for a doughnut before I go on. I bought a couple of glazed at a bakery and I daren’t retire to a café with them lest my wrists are slapped like last time when this bitchy faggot of a cappuccino vender reprimanded me for eating a doughnut in his establishment.
Fuck, I felt like I had pissed in the holy water. I suppose I can understand, but his tirade was groundless as I only came in to meet a friend and as he hadn’t quite finished his coffee I sat down and ate the rest of the doughnut I had innocently started while walking to the rendezvous. People only have to look at me sideways with disapprobation and I fall apart. Secretly I want to be loved by everyone and when I come face to face with disapproval it’s like having the wind knocked out of me.
I maintained my connection with Paris by reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Which was good and very Parisian. Despite the scathing remark about male homosexuality she is quoted by Hemingway as saying in his A Moveable Feast, I’d still side with Gertrude over Ernest. She is so brazenly conceited, conceited in that she’s aware of her own talents which I’ll concede are considerable. Hemingway I find likes to play at the same honesty but gets a little too taken with the admission of his talent which I find nauseating.
After Stein I read The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, in part to see how many places I recognized from its being set in San Francisco. I recognized them all. I enjoyed the style, it seemed almost tongue-in-cheek after so many caricatures of the tough-guy and there was genuine suspense. The part Peter Lorre played in the movie was originally written, I discovered, as an archetypical, sniveling, slimy, ingratiating, greasy-haired, hand-wringing, cowardly, hypereffeminate homosexual. Hammett in his characterization of Joel Cairo doesn’t pull any punches. You can’t help finding Cairo despicable more than pitiful. And he’s always fawning over this muscular twenty year old punk that Sam Spade wisecracks about. Hot stuff and interesting to see the portrayal of queer in the literature of the 30s.
I’ve re-located to the Savoy-Tivoli café on upper Grant. My table is flooded with sunlight, my order is untaken. This is the queen of café-life in the area. It seems to attract the most artistic, the most truly café conscious crowd in North Beach. It’s alright, but I’m by no means a regular and sometimes feel as if my space at a table should more rightly belong to someone else. I know that’s me, not them who are giving that impression.
The next day I read Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin which was more kindly to the homosexual at large, and not surprisingly as Isherwood was one of the most at large homosexuals on the Berlin scene at one time. The stories were portraits of people I found very admirable. There are times when I find it difficult to like Isherwood while he reveals himself because in him I often see me. And the characteristics least easy to excuse in other people are always, for me, the ones I know to be mine.
I think the most fervent wish I have right now and I have had for some time is to be visited by enough money to fly (or even hitch) to Paris and show up on your doorstep unexpectedly. I’d be really pissed off if you gave in to a heart attack. When do you think we will see one another again, seriously? I’ll earnestly try to do everything possible to reunite us this Christmas. I think of you every day, even for extended periods. And because of this we don’t really seem so far apart.
I miss you a lot Deidre,
Love George
Monday April 24
Montgomery St.
San Francisco
11:00 a.m.
Dear Deidre Mine
I had wanted to get you a postcard of something peculiarly Los Angelean while I was there but saw nothing (in fact the best postcard of L.A. I’ve ever seen has been here: downtown lies shrouded in an orange haze while the sun shines on), and I couldn’t get near the L.A. County Art Museum to rifle through their collection of postcard reproductions as TUTANKHMANIA has the place firm by the throat and there is a perpetual, sweaty, queue of people who had sent away months ago for tickets and now show up at their appointed times. Even the city’s Rapid Transit buses have the boy-king’s eyes painted on them. Where will it end?
I didn’t want to embark on an actual letter – I’m not quite ready yet – but did want you to know that I’m preparing to respond to the quite outstanding effort that arrived from Paris March 27th. I am collecting in my mind observations and ideas and witty ways of writing these and plan to begin an epistle worthy of you in short order. But while that remains in its nascent stages I want you to know that you are on my mind every day (no kidding) and I often feel frighteningly alone thinking of you so far away. In fact I felt that while sitting in the dark of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in L.A. where Carlos was appearing. I suppose I had been thinking of how to describe the evening
to you when suddenly I snapped out of the reverie, found myself staring at the little light illuminating the ‘D’ on the row in front of me and realized that there was such a huge physical distance between us. And financial and thus even temporal distance in terms of how long it will take to reunite us.
I sent off a book to the rue Perronnet. I doubt if you’ve gotten it yet since I went the cheap route and let it go by ship. And for all I know they could mean the ship leaving from San Francisco and calling at Australia, Malaya, Eden, Capetown and the Canaries before it comes anywhere near you. Given such a colorful trip, I’d almost consider mailing myself.
Ah well, Deidre, Deidre, I love you. And I still daydream of the look on your face when I manage to show up on your doorstep unexpectedly one late evening. I’ll write, I mean really write soon.
Love, George
Thursday April 27
Montgomery St.
1:00 p.m.
Oh Deidre,
I felt so lonely last night. So alone. I went to write you but the reality of the act acknowledged the distance between us and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was mixed up with circumstances here but there was no denying the emptiness I felt was brought home by thinking at what a remove you were from me.
I preface what I’m going to relate so we hopefully will both be more objective. Carlos is by no means the culprit in this relationship; and yet this knowledge doesn’t lessen the anger or bitterness or even – believe it or not from me – UNCONTROLLABLE hysteria I sometimes suffer because of him.
The stage was set last night by a period of our not having sex. I can only say sex is not important to me when I’m having it. From comparing the libidos of various people I’ve talked to, I seem to be quite lustful. I wouldn’t say my appetite is insatiable, just constant. I would enjoy sex every day if that were possible. On the other hand there is Carlos. I suppose it’s partly his age – according to Kinsey he peaked about seventeen years ago; but I’ve sounded him out on his sexual life when he was younger and it’s never been high pressure (I mean in frequency). I seriously think this has something to do with dancing. Not only does it sublimate energy, as any intense involvement does, but it also engenders a wary attitude. Carlos will pass on sex for fear of sapping himself before a show (I believe it’s lunacy but I understand) and the constant aches and pains and petty ills he seems visited with of course rule out the evening’s carnality. But the fact remains that I feel I need sexual involvement much more, and the less I receive it the more my need intensifies. Besides which I find Carlos very exciting and it’s terribly frustrating – I don’t want anyone else.
So we have all that established. Now this next is not complicated at all but it may sound rather vile. My irritation at this imposed celibacy is definitely underlined by my feeling that sex is my due. Intellectually/mentally this relationship is nowhere. I’ll go into that later. Emotionally it provides a good deal of satisfaction though I am consciously settling for less than my emotions alone would dictate. The only completely fulfilling aspect has been the physical one and it holds some importance. When that is withheld (though I know he’s not actually keeping it from me out of spite like that word implies) I feel like, well what’s the fucking point? Now don’t start wrinkling your forehead and muttering, “I can’t understand how anyone could be together on so flimsy a pretense.” I’ll flesh it out in due course.
All of that has been weaving itself in and out of my life. So last night I had reconciled myself to not seeing him the entire evening as he normally goes upstairs to his mother’s to indiscriminately watch television if his evening is otherwise unoccupied. But surprisingly, he hung around for quite a while. Then that was thwarted when he left again. We weren’t doing anything that night – no movies as that’s the only thing we do, but somehow the feeling that I had been deserted hit me awfully hard. That was when I felt I couldn’t write you or do anything. I felt so completely alone and desperate.
When Carlos is not directly involved in the thing or things that concern him alone (the major ‘thing’ being dance and his career) he falls into the obnoxious rut of being entertained. If it’s not a movie we go to it’s television he watches. Always, always he is a passive, lethargic spectator. He’s not stupid. I mean he has the capability to be intelligent, but his mind has been fallow so long it’s often quite empty. This is more serious than it sounds (not that fallowness itself is a laughing matter). His passivity with regard to anything not centered around him means that there is no active input on his part in this relationship. I had always been frustrated by his non-communicative nature but couldn’t pinpoint why. I kept thinking perhaps that was just a difference in character between he and I that I should try and compromise on. But I now think it goes much deeper than that and implies a grave indictment.
His inability to talk results in a shallowness and non-involvement. The minute he is faced with being alone with me with nothing in particular to do he is a blank. At that point he isn’t being entertained or receiving the personal gratification he does from dance. He’s face to face with another person. Normally he would attempt to be entertaining. That is how he acts towards alleged friends. But they’re not friends at all in our sense of the word; they’re acquaintances of a fairly superficial nature. And it’s not them. I know some of them and I have become more of a friend in my brief time than Carlos has been capable of in all his long acquaintanceship. When he’s faced with other people he tries to be the funny man or the theatricalist or the charmer. In these other cases it gets laughs and they ‘love’ him because of this charming nature and apparent easy-goingness. And of course he is blind enough to eat that nonsense up and believe he is loved and cared for because of this entertainment quality. But I am neither entertained nor charmed by these antics (again a bad choice of words as they aren’t individual sillinesses as much as a continued attitude).
But he doesn’t know anything else, and is afraid to just be in a position person to person. We never really talk. He can’t, he doesn’t know how. So I can’t even explain what importance that kind of mutual understanding means. That is something that is always eating at me. We’re only together as long as I am willing to more or less fit in with his life though for him none of this is conscious. But what’s the fucking point of being together when one party is adding nothing?
Okay I’m calm, I’m calm. Now none of this is quite so clear-cut, as these things rarely are I suppose. I freely admit I’m locked into my own position and am being one-sided. There are all sorts of signs, especially to an outsider, that would indicate that Carlos is very much involved and really does care. This is a tricky point. I’m going to go so far as to say those signs are misleading but that I believe Carlos to be wholly sincere. That’s what makes for the muddiness. If he were truly malevolent it would be easy to dismiss him. But he’s not. He’s full of sincere conviction that he’s doing his part and loving me.
But these things take the form of endearment, quasi-baby talk, sometimes coyness, bringing me plates of food, including me in various errands he has to run and generally playing at being affectionate. To the unwary eye it would seem he’s just the perfect little love bird. In a way he is. There are seldom outward signs of moodiness and he has the ability to make me feel wanted and needed in those small respects. But there is nothing deeper than “playing at” affection. He doesn’t know how to be any different, he doesn’t know how to go beyond anything than merely being superficial, being in fact entertaining. I believe in his sincerity which prevents me from truly hating but he also believes in it which precludes my respect for his self-knowledge.
Up until now I’ve believed I’ve actively wanted this relationship. I’m sure I don’t now. It has absolutely nowhere to go and will only be a deadening affair from here on in. I know that; Carlos doesn’t nor will he ever probably. Oh, but I’m afraid to do anything positive, i.e. extricate myself from Montgomery St. Most of all I am still afraid to actually face up to how empty the whole thing is. I’m sure this is why the sexual aspect seems so important – if that withers away then I’m forced to see that there is nothing else to fall back on. There is no conversation we can have that warrants being together, no mutual concern or desire to just be with one another or interest in how that person is. I feel like screaming inside, please Carlos, please don’t take the sex away, don’t force me to confront nothingness. If I do, then I’ll have to make a decision, and if I’m at all sane it would have to be to leave. But I’m afraid of leaving. I’m involved with him, with another person, and his absence is going to cause a hole, and I’m terribly afraid of that feeling. Ironically enough, if I did leave I think it might hit Carlos harder. Does that sound like a bizarre paradox?
(Continued)
Tuesday May 1
1:00 p.m.
Portofino Caffé
Ghiradelli Square
Please forgive me the break in writing – the night after I wrote you there was a terrific explosion between Carlos and I, the details of which I’ll go into shortly. I will say that I am sleeping and eating again now and this gorgeous day has lightened me considerably.
The mild breeze off the bay and the sun and the light blue of the sky and misty hills beyond the water have calmed me down remarkably and I feel complete again – confident and happy.
In fact I strode into the Caffé Roma yesterday afternoon to write you but I was snagged by an inebriated poet and ended up talking. Not that I knew this latter day Homer mind you, I just walked towards my usual table avec Caffe Latte and he hailed me over to sit down. I thought that a little presumptuous. What made him think I had come in for the express purpose of availing myself of conversation with the first talker? I spat out a curt “no thank you” – yesterday I was in no mood to be intruded upon and then accommodate the intruder – and sat down.
Just as I clicked the ballpoint into position he wheeled around and apologized saying he hadn’t meant to offend and explained that he was a poet (some people call him brilliant) and a writer etc. etc. and he only wanted to talk because he learned that way. He kind of melted me. He was very sincere and I did agree with his points even if I never would have flung my arms with quite the same enthusiasm to a total (and frowning) stranger, as he did me. But, as has been brought home to me with some violence of late, everyone is different and you have to balance judging them with understanding them. So I found myself smiling and, after a few remarks of his, dealing with a very intelligent, articulate man in his middle forties who seems to have deteriorated much since his wife (Allison) died six years ago. Anyway I felt my intellect tickled and it was a nice change. What is more he recited a couple of his poems (somewhat loudly and in declamatory fashion but at least I didn’t turn red with embarrassment) – and I have no reason to doubt they were his – which were very beautifully written. So I suppose thank god we aren’t all mice like me, who sit so silently and alone.
My mousiness was further evidenced when Carlos arrived. Now I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been into the Caffé Roma and how many hours I’ve spent there. Carlos has never been in before and only came by this time because he knew I’d be there, YET the minute he walked in there was someone he knew (an ex-stripper) and they were chatting and he was introduced to her male companion and things were quite merry and when we left the guy behind the counter waved and called goodbye and Carlos did the same thing as though they were old friends. I felt like a piece of baggage.
If I’m true to my word at the opening of this installment I should now address myself to the Armageddon between Carlos and myself. But I feel so good right now writing you and being here and sipping my café au lait that I’m going to beg out of the gruesome details for the time being.
Instead, guess who wrote me on Saturday? No, don’t bother to guess, it was Martin, still teaching high school English. I had written first figuring he could know nothing about my or anyone else’s whereabouts because no one is terribly good at keeping on touch. He said that was quite right, he had been in the dark about me since last summer and apparently knew nothing of you or any of our high school student crowd.
Martin on his last page pens: “One thing continues to puzzle me, though. It’s true of many of the people who graduated about the same time you did. You don’t seem to have any need to take a particular line of work to your bosom. I ask about this not to criticize, but to understand. I was trained from an early age to seek a calling. I and most of my friends did so – I think – sincerely. You, on the other hand, seem quite happy to find enough work to feed and clothe yourself [quite right] and to finance trips to where you want to go. Don’t you ever feel insecure? Is this a permanent state, or do you plan to (oh heavy-handedly worded expression) ‘settle down’ one day to a job you really like? You don’t have to answer that if it embarrasses you. If it doesn’t though, I’d be very interested to know what it feels like to be in your position. I keep wondering, I guess, if it’s something I should have tried.” I plan to answer him at length.
(Continued)
Wednesday May 2
Land’s End
Pacific Ocean
Yesterday I left off in a hot sun atop Nob Hill because the carillon in Grace Cathedral told me it was six o’clock and I suddenly remembered I had been invited to dinner at Gao’s. Which was delicious as usual and very relaxing. I think it was a combination of grass and Grieg’s "Piano Concerto in A minor." Whatever it was it was just what I needed. When I came home I was able to set aside the fact that Carlos is pretty much a loss and found myself laughing with him, something I rarely do. Mostly because he isn’t that funny seen from the inside of a relationship.
Today I have finally come to Land’s End. It’s magnificent and that’s quite aside from being the local nude beach with a heavy gay turnout. Actually that’s probably the least attractive aspect even though I must freely admit it to be a factor that piqued my interest. Gao often comes here and his frequent mention of the place is what prompted me to come have a look. Today is not ideal and certainly nothing like the beach at San Diego where I baked brown for a week last summer. There it was hot and hazy on a wide stretch of white sand backed by rock cliffs. Here there’s a cool wind off the ocean whipping up white caps and smashing enormous waves against these large hunchbacks of black-green rock that are littered from the beach out into the sea. When they crash it sounds like cannon muffled behind hills close at hand. The numbers that were squatted bumper to bumper on this small plateau of sand when I first came have rapidly dwindled.
The wind has gotten chillier and it feels as though it’s preparing to lead the five o’clock fog in. Out to sea it looks misty, though overhead the sun is still brilliant in a blue sky.
This small but densely populated plot is relatively secluded though within partial sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s surrounded by steep though not sheer hills and as I wound around the path on the higher levels I looked down on patches of stunted greenery bent by a wind that must accompany them their entire life.
Something caught my eye and I looked again to see that the ground below was carved up by innumerable paths and was crawling with males in various states of undress. It struck me as funny; I was reminded of when I’d go to sit down on grass that looked so innocent from above but on closer inspection was alive with scores of ants moving in every direction. In order to get to the beach you have to thread your way through this arbored maze, which I did, but there was nothing of extraordinarily titillating demeanor so I pressed on to the sand where a considerable yardage of buttocks were being proferred to the sun.
I thought it a cunning move on your part to bring up the subject of Greece, proposition me as you did, at the end of your letter. It came as a complete surprise and because it was one of the things you leave me with, it stuck in my mind. I felt that excitement take hold of my stomach and twist it over onto its side, the same excitement I’m always gripped with when contemplating the real prospect of somehow fulfilling my dreams. Not just dreaming them anymore. I will give you a definite, unadulterated, unreserved and seriously considered YES, YES, YES, Deidre for absolutely certain without a shadow of a doubt I’m coming. The thing I most want to do is join
you in Paris, then travel with you, then go to Greece with you so that my acceptance of your suggestion is happiness threefold. And don’t think that this is a decision I’ve come to because of recent personal upheavals and one I’m opting for merely out of solace. No.
I plan tomorrow to go and scrounge up a Michelin Greece and maybe find their tourist office here and begin searching for a little discriminating knowledge. I thought I would come over around November (in time for my 23rd birthday in case you’ve forgotten) or the beginning of December. I hope you don’t mind waiting that long but it’s the time I figure I require to save funds. As it is I still have a thousand left from the inheritance though you’re under the impression I haven’t any, so that’s the insurance I need to know definitely I will be there even if I can’t make any extra. After reading your letter, I hit the streets looking for extra work. Which I subsequently found, but that’s another story.
Somewhere along the line I’ve come home from the beach, undeservedly tired, have relaxed in the bath, and arrived at work in a somewhat burnt condition from this afternoon’s leisure. It’s dim and I’m alone tonight. No waiter, no waitress, no barmen and all because there’s no audience – well, only about thirty. This gives me solitude and peace of mind to cast my thoughts into the promise of the future.
If it’s possible I’d very much like to go to the Near East. I would give my right arm (I hear this is a Saracen tradition) to learn about the Arab world. I find it exciting and mysterious and I’m sure this is connected with the impression that it is
really the center of the world, the cradle of civilization and so many civilizations, the link with the beginning of what we are today.
I am tempering this idealization of you and I hand in hand receiving the secrets of the ancients with an awareness of our individual temperaments. There are times when neither of us will be fit for human contact and when, unfortunately, the only human contact we’ll be forced to have is one another. We may as well face this and perhaps prepare some kind of contingency for the eventuality. The last thing I’d want to do is go our separate ways. I will try to be completely open and discuss something if it’s bothering me and certainly try to compromise on any points about my personal habits you might find objectionable. I think talking it out is very important here. If I understand the irritations, they seem simple ones to overcome; it’s when I feel the other person is not being honest but bitching about things irrelevant to the problem in order to hurt or seek revenge that I really smolder. I know I need to worry the least about this with you. But there will be friction and fights AND hugging and tears and reconciliation. I’m not being cynical, just realistic. It’s like saying you know you’re going to talk and breath and blink and drink tea in the next 30 years.
You must know how insecure I am. I can take criticism but not spite. I need to be reassured with some regularity that I am not essentially despised. I’ll even need it from you whom I know so well. Then we must consider my aloofness. That part of me which seems to need solitude so often and so completely. It’s something that hasn’t really changed and so will present a real problem as I know you are quite the opposite – only really appreciate and enjoy when you’re in the company of someone else. You know it’s no reflection on you this solo wandering of mine. I understand it’s a psychological manifestation but nonetheless I usually only feel free to absorb and think and see and do when I’m on my own – by “my own” I mean without anyone who knows me. It must be a feeling of complete freedom to choose what to do and when to do it. A very selfish attitude, and something akin to the kind of thing I shake my fist at Carlos for. But I’m going to make a conscious and determined effort to relax and appreciate things as they come and be aware that the beauty of something is not compromised by someone at my side.
Yet you know some of the fondest memories I have are of me at the wheel of the van in Europe and you translating George Sand at my side. In fact now that I furrow my brow and try to think it seems all my vivid and piercing memories are connected with people.
(Continued)
Thursday May 4
the beach again
Numerically not quite so many today, the sun hasn’t been so bright. When I started out it got dull on the bus but I though even a hike along the cliffs would be enjoyable. Which it turned out very much to be. I took a different route, a far more precipitous one but much the more rewarding. It skirted the very edge of the sea, about 100 ft. up. Perched on a barren outcrop looking like a bearded eaglet I sat listening to the thunder below and watched a seal and a freighter follow their respective muses through the waves. Arriving here I found it warm enough to smear my chest with lotion and fall asleep for an hour in the hopes of subsequent color. I am just now awake.
It was either the same night I received your letter or the following day that I was in the clutches of fiscal desperation. That is, I had gotten to think of the practicalities involved in getting from here to Greece and saw at once that further procrastination re employment would be unadvised. And so it was that I walked down Broadway to Bill’s Bath, a gay bathhouse a couple of blocks away. I thought, well it’s a step. It would also be convenient to home, hours when I’d have nothing to do anyway (apart from sleep i.e. midnight to 8:00 a.m.). Not that it’s an underground operation – baths here are numerous, clean, respectable and BUSY. They said they’d let me know but didn’t. Just about this time I found that the theater was upping performances from four nights a week to five. So that’s a bit more cash but minimal and only really enough to make subsistence slightly less so. After Bill's (which was no terrific disappointment) I offered my soul to the Club Baths which is far more lavish and paid more too. They sounded fairly positive but there probably won’t be anything until the end of May. My general plan is to collect part-time hours. This will prevent boredom (in part) but also might lead to exhaustion with little money to show for it. Story of my life.
Here I am at the theater. Tonight has gone fast and now, after the audience has retreated inside for the second act, I’m left alone again to write. We had two groups tonight. Groups are usually always buggers. Either they give you all their tickets beforehand one by one so the usher has to show them all individually where to go or they line up en masse and progress like locusts through the seats. Tonight I was blessed with both types. The former arrived first and I, in complete control, tore their tickets as they entered at random and pointed in the general direction of their seats, hoping for the best. John the usher was completely bewildered but tried to sort out the growing knot of heads turning left and right, bending over seats to see numbers and comparing stubs. I averted my eyes.
When the other troop arrived I thought it would be simple because I had their tickets all together and could just indicate predesignated rows for them. Confidently I strode ahead, 50 stubs in hand and beckoned the group leader to follow. Well while my eyes were trained on the stubs trying to discover which rows the group was to sit in, the whole two score and ten had poured through the doors and were requisitioning whatever was available. Chaos. So I gave the stubs to John and collapsed into one of the few seats vacant. They probably did a better
job of organizing themselves than my enthusiasm would have allowed anyway. I thought it was funny; my incompetence can be easily disguised as a ‘flowing-with-it’ attitude. I’m surprised people don’t mistake me for the Mississippi the way I flow.
You’ll never guess what. I’ve changed locations again not to mention days. Though displaced from my regular table I am at the Caffé Roma. It’s quarter past one on a bright clear Friday afternoon. I decided to drop off here first in order to knock back a wake-up café au lait and then plan where to go to take advantage of the sun.
And so we land back on Carlos as a hot topic of conversation. Now seems a good time to explain the ‘explosion’ of the other night. As I thought, the few days between then and the present have receded the event, I’ve calmed down and I’m seeing both sides, I think, clearly. Not that this solves any problems between us, not by an inch, but it does help my emotional stability and, for your sake I hope, my coherence.
It is not at all surprising that I exploded last Friday evening I suppose because I had been writing you about Carlos for the last two days and thus forced myself to articulate in irrevocable print what I saw the relationship to be. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. It was frightening to find myself realizing and admitting to intellectual sterility, little emotional input on his part and a recent lack of sex which would lever me to face up to the vacuum. I went over and over all of this in my mind feeling more resentful, more used and more bitter. (But AGAIN I will remind both you and me there is no culprit in this – our problems are from mutual differences not one being right and the other wrong – though I have a helluva time believing crap like that).
Friday night after work I went home to be with him. I phoned him at the studio at 11:00 and was told he had just left. Stupid me. I presumed he was on his way home ESPECIALLY what with his fluishness having sapped him so severely in the last while. At quarter after three he arrived very stoned, fairly drunk and smiling and giggling and thinking all was as happy as could be. My heart was pounding furiously, I was trying to keep myself under control. I asked him just where he had been and he said he had gone to a bar, met someone, gone back to their place to smoke some “good grass.” I felt my stomach caving in. He assured me he “had done nothing wrong” because they didn’t have sex. Certainly a sexual infidelity at that point would have further dynamited my insides but I see now that that’s quite beside the point. I proceeded to bludgeon the poor bugger with hysteria for two hours. I swear I have not modeled these reactions on you and yet I found myself frothing precisely like you have always done and wondering how I could have gone on so long feigning such a relaxed attitude (one I can only judge now as possible when you are uninvolved and don’t really care).
As far as I’m concerned it was an inexcusable rudeness not to phone to tell me. Though looking at it realistically I do see to call and say he was going to a gay bar by himself wouldn’t have sat too well with me either. If he genuinely felt that he wanted to be on his own then he did have the responsibility to let me know I wasn’t included in his plans, so I could make other arrangements. He said how did he know if I was going to be home after work? I was flabbergasted. Once, ONCE have I not come home right after work to see if he was there (he hardly ever is) and the time I didn’t I left the theater in the second act to leave a note telling him precisely where I’d gone and around when I’d be home. I didn’t, nor do I, do it out of obligation as much as a concern for him, based of course on the assumption that he cares about me, where I might be and why I hadn’t let him know.
He refused to budge an inch, refused to accommodate my feelings at all, threw his admitted selfishness and disregard for anything but himself in my face and said if I could fit his life, fine, if I wanted compromise from him, too bad. And so suddenly, full grown, there was the great wall before me and now I was faced with living in its shadow and hoping it will let me through or turning my back on it, accepting it as an insurmountable obstacle and walk away.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. Every nerve in my body was humming. And Saturday night was much the same. If I understand that he needs more free time, that he’s worried about me encumbering him in the face of his career, that he’s merely going through a period of nonsexuality, if I understand that he still cares and loves me (which I do believe in spite of his inability to deal responsibly and selflessly with another person) then I can be very open-minded. But if nothing is said and he comes home at three telling me he just happened to go to a bar and meet someone and go home with them (but not to have sex ha ha) then I’m going to bloody well explode like Hiroshima.
I felt additionally suspicious the next morning when I happened (it was a thorough search) across a vial of amyl nitrate in his suit pocket. Amyl comes in these small dark bottles at six dollars a shot and when the vapor from the liquid is inhaled it provides a sexual rush. It quickens the heart and I usually end up with a rather sickly headache but for some people they can’t have sex without its stimulus. Carlos often used it before my advent but when I mentioned I thought I enjoyed sex better without it he agreed and we haven’t used it since the first few days we were together. By a coincidence, I had recently asked him what he thought was sexually sour with him and if he thought amyl might help, but he said no. Then that morning I find the very stuff. And in conjunction with the bar the night before, the discovery did not sit well.
I was really steaming along there wasn’t I? I’m afraid nothing has changed. I’m up and down about the whole situation, fully realizing the futility of carrying on but also mortally afraid to extricate myself because of the powerful withdrawal I’ll have to go through. This last week has not been a good one and I’m physically waning from the upset like I’ve never been before. I have lost weight. And it shows in my face. Not eating has weakened me considerably but I can’t help it. Lately even tea has drifted out of my routine. I’m picking though, if only for survival.
I’ve gone on and on about this. I’ll justify it by saying (though I know you understand) that right now the abject misery I’m enduring displaces all else – even writing letters. I’ve kept putting it off and it’s now Thursday May 11, 10:30 p.m. and I’m at the theater absolutely starving, chilled and dizzy. And writing this frantically by candlelight no less. I really only need a squalid garret and some woolen gloves with no fingers to complete the romanticism. I do not, however, feel romantic. It is decidedly difficult to feel romantic when members of the audience you have just ushered in are wearing small, red-glowing battery operated earrings pinpointing their every head movement in the dark. Even in America there are American tourists.
Well it’s Tuesday May 16th at only eight in the morning glory alleluiah and I feel akin to Ebenezer on Christmas morning. I feel incredibly giddy and light headed and sparkling. Last night I left Carlos. For the past two weeks I had been wondering and worrying how I was ever going to get up enough nerve to actually extricate myself from the misery. A very minor event last night which continued to illuminate his boorish insensitivity and selfishness provided me the opportunity to fairly calmly pack my things and get the hell out.
Last night for the first time in some nights I slept soundly right through and awoke feeling relieved. It’s as if all the trouble is behind me now and I can relax and enjoy my days in San Francisco as my own person in a way I haven’t done since I first arrived. It’s exhilaration I feel and I don’t think I’m fooling myself. So here I am sitting in a gloriously hot sun, contentedly alone, at Gao’s kitchen table.
Hey Deidre, I love you without reservation, hesitation or repetition – and no matter what happens by our being together for an extended period of time, I always will. Don’t let’s idealize what it’ll be like reunited and hand in hand but let’s thank god there’s more between us than even the Mediterranean world could come between. Kind of a heady feeling.
Here I am, devoted and loving as ever,
George
Thursday June 23
Ritch St. (scene of my
present employ)
4:00 A.M.
San Francisco
Dearest, loving Deidre of the alabaster breasts (I’m guessing),
If you read the heading to this page at all carefully you would have noticed that I am not only masterfully inking my way down this virgin ‘rag,’ I am also bravely persisting in doing so at four o’clock in the morning. What stamina you may think. Actually you’re not far wrong. I worked at the theater tonight from eight (when the sun was just setting, setting the Pyramid and various buildings from Nob Hill to Chinatown aglow with amber) until eleven. I issued out onto Broadway, a relatively quiet Broadway, and employed the free hour I had in getting something to provoke acne at a local hamburger joint and walking fourteen blocks or so south to Ritch St. where I now work four nights a week from midnight until 8:00 a.m.
This respite from standing, climbing stairs, folding sheets, loading washing machines, wiping ashtrays, etc. constitutes my break, and it was only through sheer force of will that I determined not to collapse on a table in the laundry room for the duration of my half hour. I am once again working for a gay bath. Hardly rewarding employment but then I don’t recall many jobs which by their nature were. To date it has at least not been boring, offering as it does a panoply of relatively naked manhood, but this really doesn’t entertain me as much as I do myself. I mean, in an office job the work usually requires that little bit of attention that rules out thinking about things of your own determining, but here the work is so blessedly mindless that my mind has free rein to waft around and weave about anything I please.
At this time of morning there are only three of us on. Allan, who more or less has supervisory responsibilities, Ryan whose position is less defined, and myself who presumably works the floor. Now Allan I quite like. But Ryan is a different story. Something that very definitely irks me about him is his habit of disco dancing to the constant stream of 4/4 time the sound system insists on producing. It’s bad enough having to listen to the damn stuff eight hours running without being obliged to watch fellow launderers jerk and gesticulate from one side of the dryers to the other. To be given over to the mindlessness of the stuff at discos is one thing,
but to maintain an active enthusiasm for it in the world outside is a different and depressing matter. On the suggestion forms the bath has, under the category of Music, Improvements of, I keep writing BACH and PROKOFIEV but it hasn’t done any good.
Now Deidre I’ve tried to be open about disco. I’ve tried to understand that it has as much validity as Beethoven, as much worth as Dvorak and as capable as Handel in providing pleasure upon listening again and again. However upon frank reflection I’m afraid I don’t see much to the form at all. Musically it strikes me as uninventive. The rhythm is constant and identical not only from bar to bar but from song to song. And as repetitive as the meter are the lyrics. This morning as I stripped beds of sheets aswim with the secretions of an evening’s debauch, I gave an ear to one such disco ‘hit.’ It appears that the young woman (of unspecified identity) wants her man, whom she seems to love devotedly, to spend the
night with her. He, in turn, says, yes he’d like to, but then comes the time when he’ll leave – we are to presume after orgasm and before dawn.
It’s now 3:30 p.m. Friday. Carlos came to the theater last night – I hadn’t seen him in going on three weeks – and corralled me into spending the night with him which I did out of concern for his feelings not out of particular desire. He is desperate. Since I left he’s been going through absolute hell and I’m afraid I had a pretty clear picture of what was going to happen when I left Montgomery St. I feel quite stable and I’m not undergoing any of the pain that abrupt separation can cause if you’re in love. I was willing and desirous to work at a relationship which meant a good deal to me but when it soured there was just a lousy relationship to walk away from, not a part of me I felt I had to leave behind. I knew it would be different for Carlos, and it is. He wants me, needs me back very badly but I’ve told him no, that I’m happy in my situation and that ‘us’ is over. I’ll attempt to help any of the hurt I may be causing but I can’t love him or tell him that I do.
Poor bastard, I’m so grateful for not being in his shoes. Last night in bed he started to cry – I’ve never seen him cry ever before. He said “I’m not the first one to cry for your love am I?” He actually talks that way. As it happened he wasn’t the first one. David in absolutely identical circumstances (bed, darkness, holding one another but cognizant of the situation) did so too, and so all I uttered was a single “no” into the dimness. I wait for the agonizing day when I hit upon an impossible, wholly unrequited love that will completely alter my life, probably for the worse.
I’m afraid this is being composed in bits and pieces. Here I am back at the baths, oh joy oh rapture. Tonight, Friday night/Saturday morning seems unusually busy. I think it must be because of this Sunday’s Gay Freedom Parade. June 25th has become established in recent years as Gay Pride Day (to homosexuals as May 1st is to the workers of the world) and nowhere on this sunny planet is the festivity greater than in San Francisco. The turnout along Market St. from First to City Hall is estimated to top 300,000. Almost a third of a million in support of gay and human rights.
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I was here last year and it’s really a very moving sight. Compound this with the jubilation and enormous energy generated and it’s easy to explain why I tingle at the very recollection. Thousands come from all over the country, the continent and geography even more remote, to be here for this day.
They’re from L.A., the Mid-West, even New York and places like London and W. Germany. Friends billeted with friends, hotels doing bumper business, bars brimming and even we are profiting from the influx. I’m marching Sunday morning, I’m working in the afternoon at a booth the baths are setting up in Civic Center Plaza, I’ll be at the theater in the evening, then back here by midnight which spells out a 24 hr. day. So Saturday night (the distant end to this very day I’m just beginning in fact) I’m going to try and get right to bed from work.
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(Continued)
Wednesday June 28
20th St.
12:25 p.m.
Afternoon Deidre. Between the parade and trying to get caught up on sleep and working I haven’t had too many chances to knock off a further few pages to you. Right now I should be trying to stock up on more sleep because I’ll probably be up another twenty four hours (having the theater and the baths until tomorrow morning) if I don’t. But I slept all night last night and so do not feel inclined to waste this somewhat sunny but very pleasantly mild day.
Monday at midnight I went to work at Ritch St. Things were fairly active and I figure this is due to the vestiges of the mob incumbent upon San Francisco for the Parade. The Chronicle estimated there were about 240,000 present (at the Parade, not the baths) which is
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inaccurate as far as I can see.
Last year, posed upon the steps of City Hall and enjoying the crowded vista of the square in front of me, I could see that the far end of the plaza was empty. This year the entire place was full to burstin’. Not only this but there were a couple of streets off of the plaza with market booths where there were crowds that could not be seen. And last year there were an estimated 250,000 so this year’s figures must easily top that I’m certain. Even here the established publications of the public-at-large will underestimate anything gay – both in numbers and importance.
Prior to the parade there was no mention of it at all in either the Chronicle or the Examiner. This dumbfounded me; obviously anyone in the gay community here knew about events in detail but the straight community (larger by far) had no means of being readily informed simply because the media they’re in contact with did nothing to publicize. One would think the papers and radio and television had some sort of civic obligation to at least let the city know that Market St. for twelve blocks would be impassable for a day not to mention Civic Center and surrounding streets. And this is the largest event in the city’s yearly itinerary (in terms of turnout) and I’ll bet by far the most jubilant. Yet many people I talked to hadn’t the slightest idea there was anything going on at all. These were of course non-gays, people at the theater I know, etc.
I was up early Sunday morning in an attempt to locate the van the baths had, where a number of us were assembling to blow up 7,000 balloons and distribute $1.00 passes. I didn’t mind handing out the balloons (pink and helium filled) but the discount coupons seemed obtrusive commercialization. When given a stack to disperse I left the scene of the van and disappeared into the crowd assembling all down Spear St., ostensibly to pamphlet the masses but actually to see what was lining up for the
procession. We at Balloon Station Zero were at the very head of the cavalcade, at the corner of Spear and Markets Sts. For blocks south of Market on Spear the various contingents and floats and bands and participating individuals were grouping. It was a gorgeous day. There were the Gay Latino Alliance, Gay American Indians, Disabled Gay People, Lesbian Mothers, the Gay Freedom Marching Band, Straights for Gay Rights, Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, Black Women for Gays, plus entries from bathhouses, bars, discos, restaurants, publications, professions, innumerable political committees, associations and coalitions, and thousands of people like myself who simply walked, unaffiliated.
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And so back to the van where I was pretty useless because I couldn’t for the life of me snap the little plastic disc into place at the base of the balloon after they’d been engorged by helium and there were only four helium tanks anyway and there were queues for the things and I was so incompetent that I climbed onto the roof of the van and joined my boss to watch the initiation of things.
The crowds were quite dense by our corner, maybe 6-7 deep along the sidewalks, and hung from windows at the Hyatt Regency and lamp standards and entrances to the metro. There was a sudden roar of motorcycles and the whole area roared a welcome to the beginning of the celebrations. The sound of the initial cheers and applause and shouts echoed off of all the buildings and surrounded us – Leonard (my boss) mentioned a spine tingling and I agreed.
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It was a marvelous, stirring sight. I felt then a part of something unique and something that could not but touch me deeply. It was important for me to have that feeling, even briefly, because I nearly always feel an outsider to any ‘event,’ the biggest event being life itself often. But that view, that music, those shouts and my position among it all absorbed me; it was that elation at being one with something large and yet not in a mindless or mob mentality sense.
While watching the spectacle and feeling the roof of the van gradually indent to a depth of three feet (Leonard too busy spotting former tricks and pointing them out to me to notice) I was tapped on the leg from below. It was my friend Brian. I had readily agreed to join Brian and his mother in the parade when he suggested it and now that I was no longer any use to the bathhouse ballooning,
I in turn tapped Leonard a fond goodbye and clambered down to happily join Brian.
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His mother came up from San Diego to march with him at his request. She reminded me of my mother in some ways – in stature, in facial structure, in a quiet politeness among the peers of her son. Around her neck she carried a piece of white Bristol on which appeared I LOVE MY GAY SON. All down Market St. she and Brian were loudly cheered. They walked side by side, the balloons I had given them entangled together, forming a very happy couple.
Mrs. Johnson was floating on air, as she said, from all the attention. After nearing a hundred we stopped trying to count all the people who asked for pictures or photographed her and her sign as she walked. When a gap in the parade opened up and people were able to focus
on the sign there would be a tremendous excited applause from either side and cheers of support. Some ran out and kissed her or hugged her and told her how proud they were. I asked Brian if he felt left out having so many attractive men kiss his mother but giving him a miss. He smiled slyly and said “a little.” The whole route I couldn’t help a huge grin as I watched these two – I felt proud of them both.
At this point I left them and retired to a spot upon the grass with hundreds of others and here in the warmth of the sun I dozed fitfully while the speeches of the day floated across the square courtesy of erected amplifiers. The tenor of this year’s oratory, in fact the atmosphere of the whole event was very much different from ’77 and I’m afraid, though not exactly depressing, it certainly gave me pause to think.
Last year, with Anita Bryant’s crusading victory still a fresh smarting on everyone’s cheeks, and the murder of Robert Hillsborough here two weeks before the parade, murdered because he was homosexual, it was an emotional time. June 25th came around and it became a desperate statement – this is where we draw the line, we’re fighting for our rights, our survival and we’re going to begin not only to stop the repression but roll it back. I’ve mentioned how moving it was. There was a crisis and anyone who was gay had his or her freedom at stake. The numbers that showed up were unexpected; there was a great feeling of unanimity and brotherhood. But this year the emotionalism was gone. The people turned up but more in a frivolous frolicking frame of mind than in a serious show of defiance and belief in what they were saying by their marching. I was given the impression that they had succumbed to the belief that what had been done and was being done was enough to ensure their security; that it was safe now not to be too very concerned about the threat the outside world offers. Anita Bryant has become laughable – they’ve ridiculed her so as to successfully dethrone her as the fearful Baptist madwoman she once was to them. But as a result of not being afraid of her and what she means, instead of a courageous political and moral stand, there is only the retreat into the crazy world of bars and baths and faddish clothes and a belief that things will always be this free, this acceptable and this safe.
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Deidre, I know this is only page eight but I’m calling it quits. I’ve had so little chance to sit down and write without having to go back to work or go to sleep or keep an appointment or some goddamned thing. As you know there is so much to say. I’m also getting depressed with my writing per se. I feel terribly repetitious; I feel as if my prose is baroque – heavy, ornate, dark, convoluted. I’m so sick of the appearance of meaningless qualifiers like rather, quite, little, somewhat and I resolve to whittle away my use of “very” down to a minimum. I certainly wouldn’t want the purge to end me up an apostle of Hemingway (god forbid) but my paragraphs could do with more of a clean, well-lighted look.
Something that keeps resurfacing in my view of the future is the picture of you and I together as a couple waiting out our lives. Waiting them out in a rewarding and full sense but doing this together. As if we were an essential coupling much as Sartre told Simone that theirs was an “essential” love (sounds like a line to me) though there would be many contingent loves weaving in and out of their lives. Insofar as I have anything that means emotional attachment, respect, love, friendship and the ability to laugh, I have you. There will always be sexual and highly emotional relationships for both of us outside of us. The only thing I’m trying to tell you is, you mean far more to me than anyone else either before now or in the years to come as far as I can see. I can only foresee our relationship becoming richer and since it has such a magnificent start over any other relationships we may have later, it seems unlikely that anything will supplant it.
This is the image I have of us. But distance does sometimes make the heart grow fonder and there is no use pretending when we are together it is all bliss without blisters. But I’ve never left you with a bad taste in my mouth especially since I’ve come round to seeing that things must be talked out in order to reach an understanding (this is not to imply agreement) so that when we are met with problems there is at least communication – sometimes heated but always available. I love you Deidre. I miss you. Knowing you’re here somewhere on the planet assures me of being understood and comforted and cared about. And as long as we can write, the distance between us doesn’t seem discouraging or insuperable.
Happy Bastille Day and a most Happy Birthday
Love George
Wednesday August 2
Well I’m fucked if I can figure out any more inspired opening salutations ma chère, chère Deidre whose alabaster breasts I have seen before,
It won’t be long before I’ll have to quit this thing because Gianni is coming over – whom I’ll explain about in a moment. While I think of it, and since I have nothing else in particular to use this paragraph for, I have your birthday presents here, meager offerings though they be for such an auspicious natal anniversary as the twenty-fourth.
I have been a lazy fuck in mailing them but I hope you’ll accept these when they arrive in the spirit in which they were bought …poverty. I’ll try to get them along soon, but don’t hold your breath.
Gianni is a rather beautiful affair comprised of Italian genes who is my ideal insofar as sexual attraction is concerned, who is my peer intellectually (how much does that require?), chronologically and emotionally. We seem to be muy sympatico as they say down on 24th St. He lives high atop Washington St. on Nob Hill and most mornings we wake up to San Francisco Bay receiving the fog through the uprights of Golden Gate. Absolutely beautiful.
Within the short space of a month or two I have come to lead a dissipated but by no means unhappy life. I am marvelously happy, I’m not sure why…it is not that silly giggling happiness that accompanies alleged love or infatuation for, though presently involved to some degree, it feels a refreshing, healthy involvement with little (none so far) of the negative, clinging, cloying qualities these relationships are so often cursed with. I haven’t even gotten to the point of considering it a ‘relationship’ as such; it simply seems Gianni and I spend a fair amount of time together by mutual consent and with mutual enjoyment. I have maintained enough of me to feel secure and unpossessive and content to be apart and with myself. I’m rather sure Gianni is in the same position though we’ve neither of us said anything and frankly I prefer it that way. This time I’m willing to leave definitions to much later or until some terrible obstacle surfaces forcing us to define something.
Though bringing much contentment and pleasure, Gianni is by no means the crux of my happiness. I’m continuing to enjoy the city and the people who have become my friends but I’m also enjoying my existence itself. I continue to loathe work and have therefore terminated my employment at the baths which I miss not one iota. The theater has never seemed like work and I wouldn’t want to leave it because a good deal of my most enjoyable socializing occurs there or centers around it. So I’m floating quite blissfully along; actively enjoying my time no matter how it’s spent.
(Continued)
Tuesday August 15
Sorry honey, but I lapsed again. I’m now sitting at the theater tediously reaping my meager financial reward for the night.
I’m beginning to get a little apprehensive about finances. I quit the baths some two weeks ago though it seems ages, and as I expected, the additional free time this gave me was immediately absorbed into my routine so that there seems as little time as ever for all the things I’m too lazy to do anyway. In fact with my mind no longer occupied muttering discontent at the prospect of another night at the baths, I find I’m beginning to consider time spent at the theater an intrusion. This always happens. Whenever I begin to cut back on obligations, the less they become the more bothersome they seem; whereas if I’ve a full schedule it seems my day is so full, not only of obligations but also of the things that I want to do – it must be that the more you do the more you’re capable of doing.
Now I only have income from the theater which I can subsist on but not save with. I think I’m up to $1800 so far but I want to leave with $2000 clear. September, October and a little of November I’m praying will be spent in some unfortunate’s employ raking in the remaining dollars necessary. I haven’t the slightest idea what I’ll do but I’ll beg, borrow and maybe steal if it comes to that to be with you by Christmas. I shan’t be there too much before Christmas. I’m unwilling to leave San Francisco until the last minute I’ll confess.
I’m not going to fuck around with this any longer as it’s meant to be a reply to your postcard. Hello and love to the entire assembled clan but most especially of course to you my sweetest young thing,
George
Friday September 15
Broadway
San Francisco
9:00 pm.
Darling Deidre,
Now don’t misconstrue this happy little illustrated note. It is not meant to be a bona fide letter in our prolonged sense of the word but only one of those rush jobs to convey information. You write postcards and I send you sketches.
This particular opus is a Frank Lloyd Wright execution and is far more beautiful than my inept rendering would lead you to believe. A wandering structure of mellow tones and ringing of the Art Deco-cum-Mayan-effects the 30s were fond of. It sits on a hill in the eastern limits of Hollywood near the confluence of such legendary madamized rivers of garishness as Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. On the flip side of this leaf are the “studies” for my drawing (quite successful too) of Washington Square here in the city. The structures, save for the coke bottle, are all on the northern side and are dominated as you can see by the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Italian community’s mother church. The finished product hangs still, I presume, in Carlos’ bedroom. I don’t know for sure not having been in Carlos’ bedroom for some months. I get the feeling I leave a wake of disaffected households as I ‘progress’ in my relationships.
Okay, the point of this thing is to notify you of what I’ve discovered visa-wise. The Egyptian consulate sent me its forms. I’ll enclose one for you but as you can well see after 3 months from date of issue it expires. And the actual entry permit is only for one month.
I have been thinking recently of trying for the Middle East as soon as possible. Tell me what you think. I’ll have my vaccinations done here before I leave. I’m getting a full complement in case we end up in Delhi or Saigon or Khartoum. No chances taken.
The gonorrhea is gone. Well there’s a five percent chance some of the contagion is swimming around somewhere still, or clinging stubbornly to some dark mucous membrane or whatever it does do, but Wednesday the second the culture comes back telling me, hopefully, I’m clean.
Since Gianni is sole proprietor here now he’s instituted classical music as an appropriate ambience for a late Saturday afternoon and I am thus pleasantly engaged here both visually (Gianni), aurally (Mozart) and intellectually (you my sweet).
Love and kisses,
George
Thursday October 5
Arts and Desserts,
Green St.
San Francisco
10:15 p.m.
Dear, dear neglected Deidre whom I haven’t seriously written in so long,
Perhaps the smell of fall in the air here reminiscent of so many October revulsions at school together, perhaps a sort of wistful melancholy that seems to have descended on me, not unpleasantly, but you’ve been very much in my mind today and come this evening after work I felt I needed to sit comfortably near you in spirit by writing.
Communicating like this provides a very real comfort and that probably accounts in part for how strangely close I can feel to you by penning my thoughts for your consumption.
So here I am being pensive in this petit café in the middle of San Francisco bohemia. Geographical bohemia that is, I’m not actually in the midst of gin-soaked, cigarette-smoking bohemians right now. That reminds me. The other day I was relaxing on the sunny terrace of the Savoy-Tivoli which is the bona fide heartbeat of what’s left of bohemia here but in a lighter, less brooding, less serious vein than the 50s and 60s, and who do you think was there too? Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. Living legends. Not quite the same thrill as stumbling on Simone and Sartre stumbling themselves around Montparnasse, but a treat nonetheless.
Ferlinghetti was far more striking than I had thought. Silver gray hair and beard finely groomed with startling blue eyes. He looked more like a Marin County yachtsman than a San Francisco poet. When I got there he was preparing to leave and after a few words with Ginsberg, joined a pretty hot little blond waiting for him on the sidewalk. Not much one can gather from that except apparent heterosexuality.
Ginsberg was a little less smartly put together on the other hand. Not unkempt exactly, just a little baggier and wrinkled. He was long-haired and bearded, not unclean just untrimmed, a standard voluminous polyester shirt creased from a standard day’s wear, jeans only an American would don, that is shapeless, and I don’t remember what he had on his feet but sandals wouldn’t have been inappropriate. He carried an army green shoulder bag filled with papers and folders and files which he brought out at times during the discussion in progress at his table. He and his companions seemed in the middle of planning some upcoming event as opposed to planning an event already passed which would have been silly but on second thought something they may have done in their younger more dada days as a bold artistic strike at the status quo. The rest of the group was undistinguished as Ginsberg probably would have been had I not known who he was.
Nothing exciting happened. Gao eventually showed at twenty minutes past the
appointed rendezvous, being held up at his acupuncturist, and we fell into heated gossip, ate, drank and adjourned into the afternoon without further thought to Ginsberg and entourage in the corner. No one seemed to be paying much attention and the group seemed as unaware of everyone else.
Arts and Desserts, where I’m planted now, stays open later than Caffé Roma around the corner and isn’t as noisy, not having 18 foot ceilings painted with cherubim to echo the disco from the juke box that the more vulgar clientele opt for. Now that I stop to listen, the music here is disco as well but interspersed with some jazz and altogether less clamorous.
I figure it must be me now. Remember the anecdote I wrote you ages ago about me being the regular at the Caffé Roma and Carlos waltzing in and being fast friends with everyone by the time we left? It’s sort of the same deal here. I’ve come in countless times, regularly at the same hour after work too – my face must be familiar yet there is no acknowledgement. Given the chance, I’d like to be friendly but there isn’t the least encouragement on the part of either the waitress (who may or may not be lesbian) and the waiter (who definitely is gay). They run the place at night.
I’m sure I don’t exude frigidity, I try to smile and make eye contact and EVERYTHING but I don’t get responses. Maybe it’s them. Maybe they’re fuckers. Maybe I look like I don’t want to be bothered because I’m always writing, maybe they think I’m the fucker, so standoffish. But wouldn’t you at least nod a hello at someone who came into your establishment consistently if he wasn’t obnoxious, even if nondescript? I get to feel as if I’m not doing things properly; perhaps I unknowingly transgress café etiquette. But when I think about it I’m pretty sure THEY’RE fucked.
Whoever’s fucked they still serve the best house coffee I’ve found anywhere and for that I’ll endure the indifference.
I am gradually accomplishing bits and pieces of my necessary preparations for leaving. Everything short of getting enough money by means of additional employment. But I’m being very frugal. I’ve gotten smallpoxed at $8.00 a scratch and will wait for cholera until late November because it’s good for only three months. I might have typhus too and can get malaria pills from the Haight-Ashbury clinic which are advisable if we barge down the Nile. May as well cover all our bases.
I’m now at the bar where Gianni pours. I’m up on the Mezzanine at a refreshingly well-lit table, in relative privacy and overlooking directly its subdued goings on below where the actual bar is. Gianni is in my pants and shirt (my entire wardrobe looks better on him than me) pacing the twenty-foot length ensuring that those clamoring queers are content over their gin tonics and compari sodas. It isn’t very busy tonight. About twelve in, including me so there’s no din to compete with the unidentified showtune on tape. Why showtunes about love gone wrong or here to stay or gone away megaphoned by powerful mezzo-sopranos appeal to the 30s to 50s homosexual I do not know but apparently they identify with them.
Good christ. Some guy just slammed open the front door framing him and his blue kimono in the streetlight to shout obscenities at someone in here allegedly parked in his driveway. I don’t know what psychological victory he may have scored with the culprit but he certainly gave me a start.
It approaches two o’clock and last call I believe has been called or at least implied by the music being silenced. Gianni hates to shout out “Last Call,” he thinks it vulgar. Instead he pulls the music tape and quietly goes around asking if anyone would like another drink because it’s their last chance. This does seem a more gentlemanly way of closing up but sometimes he’s taken advantage of by hangers-on who coyly cling to their alcohol until well past two and he doesn’t have the heart to snatch their glasses away from them. Which may be sweet of him but not too advantageous to his emotional happiness since he gets terribly pissed off at people for getting him out late.
I’ll go and help him clean up now, which is terribly sweet of me don’t you think? And I’ll continue in my own endearing way with this tomorrow. Good night Deidre darling.
4:30 p.m. Monday the ninth. About one hour ago my day in the fresh air began. I’ve been up since eleven though. I intended to get out and write but Gianni suggested we spend the afternoon together doing something. This was a fine idea if we were doing something but not for me to wait around for him. Boy did I become irritated and short tempered. By noon I had tea-ed and read an article in the Chronicle about Khadafy’s Islamic Socialist regime in Libya, another about a typical Christian evangelical family across the Bay, was dressed, had done a laundry and was ready to meet the chilly overcast day. Gianni was asleep. Which is understandable since we didn’t get to bed until 4:30. And he worked 7 ½ hours just prior to that. Just as I was contemplating getting out, he woke up. Exchanged the usual what are you going to do today … I don’t know what are you going to do today … I don’t know … and agreed we both wanted to go to the bank.
I just felt like I wanted to get out immediately since I don’t find his apartment conducive to writing and much prefer the cafés. He wanted to eat and shower etc. etc. and acted a little snubbed because I seemed to not mind going our separate ways. Which I didn’t. I also didn’t mind us being together but not completely on his terms, that is waiting around for him.
But I figured it would be good to eat the delicious omelet he promised (which lived up to the promise) and then it seemed silly not to wait while he showered and put egg on his face and cleanser and moisturizer and carefully selected his wardrobe; after all we were going to the same place. Yet even though I had agreed to wait and should have accepted responsibility for this action (may the sainted Jean-Paul smile upon me) I felt I had compromised myself again and was denying myself my happiness. I controlled this but almost let go when we finally got outside and discovered I was to be kept in limbo again while he walked down the block to the bar to get his check and then he asks me if I wouldn’t mind if we looked in at an apartment across the street before we went.
You’re damn right I’d mind, at this point. These were minor things, the whole incident was minor but indicative of my ever more pressing need to assert myself and my WANTS (whether my needs or not). Sometimes I must do what I want when I want to and if I feel guilt because of how that affects the other person then I boil with righteous indignation and what’s worse feel trapped.
Gianni is not perfect: sometimes he gets too wrapped up in himself and doesn’t consider my needs enough but he realizes this happens, tries genuinely to avoid it and cares very deeply and sincerely for me. He is a good person. I on the other hand perhaps do not care enough about myself, in fact I know that’s true and so am more willing to go out of my way for other people than they are for me. And this last point is something I have to accept. Just because I persist in giving more (for whatever psychological/emotional imbalance’s sake) doesn’t mean I can expect the same in return. I deserve some, but not necessarily the same. Getting angry at Gianni instead of seeing it as my fault too makes me despise myself. But sitting down and writing it all to you helps enormously.
The Silver Anniversary card I’ve enclosed is, as you can see, for City Lights. Flip it over and we discover that it has been “a literary meeting place since 1953.” When Charlie Chaplin died they put a commemorative window up which looked a cross between a Magritte and a Picasso collage. A bowler, a cane and the editions of France-Soir and Le Figaro that appeared that day with headlines ADIEU A CHARLOT as big as those I’m sure they used to announce the end of the Fourth Republic. City Lights made a big deal of Chaplin’s death because it was named after one of his movies. This seems to be a popular idea among political and social book-minded iconoclasts because down on 17th St. is a hotly leftist-feminist-third world bookstore called MODERN TIMES. I’m waiting for one called “The Great Dictator” or “A Woman of Paris” to establish itself; and given the American proclivity for blind adoption of anything novel, they will quickly open up chains of Maltese Falcons serving fried poultry, Annie Halls rentable for parties and weddings, etc. etc.
It’s midnight and I’m caféing again, this time post-Opera. Except it’s not called L’Opéra, it’s the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House which is an unnecessary marriage of belligerence and art if you ask me but if they insist on a memorial to war better they put up an Opera House than some fierce realism depicting the wounded and victorious.
I went to see Don Giovanni (Mozart) which I enjoyed very much; I’d never seen it before. I went by myself since no one else wanted to go and I almost prefer it on my own anyway. I don’t have to worry about anyone being bored or boringly enthusiastic, I can sit and absorb the frantic attempts to get a drink at intermission, or watch the milling crowds undisturbed, or write. I can stroll out into the night smiling to myself singing snatches of what I’ve heard.
I have such a good time on my own. I could also only afford standing room which is fine because I have a tendency to fall asleep when I sit down. Still when you get there late all the earlier standees have marked off a place at the rail so you can’t lean. Viewing this situation I thought to myself, “what I need is someone who has an extra seat to ride up and offer me a place.” First Act I was lucky enough to edge into the rail and stood, leaned on my elbows, stretched my legs, cracked my ankles quite comfortably for an hour and a half. Didn’t feel drowsy at all. Second Act my wish was granted. An obviously gay man of about 38 apparently leading a sedentary life (not fat just loosened) approached me asking if I’d care to sit down since his ‘friend’ was sick that evening. Bang I was crosslegged in that Dress Circle red-velvet plush seat. His intentions seemed only to see a vacant seat used and he was pleasant if an introverted fellow. No expectations, no moves, which I didn’t know if I was being suspicious to even think about. He also gave me a ride to North Beach afterward where I was meeting Gianni, so everything worked out very well. And I’m so desperate about money that I saved the 25 cents to ride the bus to our café rendezvous.
I am getting excited about the trip. Actually exploring again, feeling dreams come true again. Not to say California hasn’t been a dream. It is. In a way the best time of my life, better than even Europe insofar as learning about the nuances of human relations. Once gone I will ache to come back the same way I’ve ached to visit Europe again. The ache will probably be stronger for California though, now that I think of it, because it’s the people and that deep impact that these people have had and are having on me that I’ll associate with my time here. In Europe I wasn’t involved except with places – even with you. It was a situation where you and I were a priori and we were in Europe not for us but for it. It’s different with California. The place is the idyllic backdrop to myself and
and the people my life is populated with. It’s beautiful, I love it, but it’s the backdrop.
I feel like my living and my view of life are far more integrated now. Remember my periodic anxiety attacks about seeing myself and the mainstream of life as separate and almost irreconcilable? I haven’t felt that for a long time. I know it hasn’t vanished but there is definite détente between the two and the Sinai will probably be ceded soon.
Lately Gianni has been awfully discontent with his whole life. The fact of us splitting up when I left was never a reassuring one and he was afraid to be left living the same life except for my not being there. The gap would be so much more noticeable and painful. Whereas I would have my emptiness filled up in part with the novelty of things to be done and the joy of reunion with you. But my most marked reluctance to leave is Gianni.
Tonight he has gone to a slave auction at some sado-masochistic bar south of Market St. “just to see what it’s like.” No harm in broadening one’s horizons. However, if I find a slave waiting at home with him, shaved head, nose ring, torn t-shirt, leather pants and a chain about his neck, there are going to be some snapped vertebrae.
Love and (french) kisses,
George
Wednesday October 25
20th St.
San Francisco
2:05 p.m.
Dear Deidre,
This letter is going to be the merest flash in the pan because it’s already mid-afternoon and the Post Office closes at five thirty and I’ve still got to lay hold of an envelope somewhere and pick up three jumbo cans of that sickening under-pressure whipped cream for the theater tonight and make it back across town to Broadway and the merry bustle of the hustlers and hookers, one of whom was going for only twenty American dollars recently, or so I overheard her relaying to the Japanese navy.
Something rather upsetting is happening to me with regard to Gianni. It’s like (from my point of view) he’s been plunged back into this horrid overconcern and stress on appearances. The ‘pretty’ aspects of himself and his surroundings. There’s a good chance I’m being over-sensitive like today when he was finishing up preparations on his face and I went to kiss him goodbye and he managed a peck, but of the type that a carefully contrived face would manage in an effort not to ‘spoil.’ Of course a hearty denial would be elicited if I confronted him with this, perhaps because it’s the truth and an unpleasant one to own up to, but perhaps because it isn’t the truth at all. Oh fuck I don’t know. This situation makes me incredibly irritable for no apparent reason and ready to blow up at Gianni over trivial things. At times I don’t even know where the anger comes from myself. It’s so unfair to him.
Okay, so much for breast beating, time’s a-wasting and I’m off to the P.O.
Love George
ADDENDUM: This is Thursday the 26th I’m writing on now and last night Gianni and I had a ‘confrontation.’ Unfortunately I was really emotional and volatile. But I was completely honest and told him everything that was bothering me about him – I figure the relationship isn’t worth a whole hell of a lot if you can’t face up to the fear (unfounded or no) of confronting someone with what’s bothering you. I am convinced now, as you always have been, that honesty is the best policy. In the course of this and when the subject turned upon his concern with appearances, I let him read the flip side of this page. He was insulted but I don’t know how seriously to take that because things were heated at this point. He felt it was unfair of me to describe him to you from my point of view only. Well it is. I think the bias is understood, and there is nothing I can do according to his isolationist “no one can speak for anyone else” policy…I’m obliged to only see things from my end. His objection was that if he ever met you, you would already be prejudiced against him because of descriptions like the one over. He asked me to include his reaction to it which is, “fuck George, I’m really insulted you could think so little of me.”
Sunday November 12
Broadway
San Francisco
6:00 p.m.
Dearest Deidre of the jingling pockets,
The letter you completed around November 2nd made it here trés quickly and this is a reply, but another of the merest flash in the pan variety. I could fill pages with a reflection of the intricacies Gianni and I are ‘enjoying’ but I don’t feel like I even want to begin to mull it over just now. It isn’t bad. It’s bumpy (fasten your seatbelts) and confirms what I told Gianni recently – that it isn’t the perfect relationship nor can I provide one. Dear Christ not only can I not provide one, which is terribly human of me don’t you think, but I find I’m also prone to making them worse than they need be. I feel compelled to bring things up, and with them comes unjustified anger and aggressiveness. Afterwards I feel so shaken. I never used to be like this, you remember? But I don’t seem capable of taking it all in my stride any more. I’m not sure which is ‘right’ because I’ve become more and more convinced that the easy-going – c’est la vie – breathe deeply and forgive mentality only exists when there is no care or personal concern. That to be involved requires pain and anger and emotional extremes simply because you’re touched that deeply.
I now refer you to my departure from this damp, misty, rainy, chilly home of ¾ million fairly sane citizens. Today is a rainy November day. I like these days though; it’s especially nice to come home and sit mesmerized by televised pap while you eat fruit and grains, fried chicken livers and whole wheat bread heavy with butter and cream cheese. And being with Gianni was good too. Not doing anything in particular, just being here with him.
I still think it terribly romantic and somehow suitable to designate a café where you’ll be and when. Then I’ll casually stroll in, our eyes will meet, well up with tears and we’ll talk solidly for the next two weeks – no sleep. Mind you I’m not adverse to our eyes meeting and welling up on a train station platform if you prefer. I’ll be there.
Less than a month, I’m pants-pissing frightened of leaving Gianni but that’s all the more reason I feel I want to. It would be a shitty thing for the relationship to proceed now based on a fear of leaving it. Somehow that belittles the relationship. I not only feel I have to leave but WANT to. It’s a positive move in spite of all the sorrow it encompasses. I’ll apologize in advance for any self-pity and moaning about lovelorn and melancholy I might do for a period after this break. Please be patient.
So here I go. November 19th the show closes after four years at the Broadway theater. November 22nd I’m 23 (jesus christ, where’s my delicate youth going?). December 2nd there’s a dinner at Gao’s to see me off. I guess that’s all the pertinent dates left upcoming in San Francisco.
See you in three weeks,
love, love, love, George
