Today my Post Office box was full of letters.
None of them from strangers. Seven of them from people I have met, have balled, have had sex with. And who would like me to get in touch. They supply their phone numbers in the event I have lost them. They remind me what a good time we had, and hint at what a better time we’ll have.
No.
I don’t want to see any of them again.
No new mail. I suppose I should run the ad again, as I have more or less ceased getting replies from the last insertion. Or I could call some of the people whose original letters I never got around to answering.
Not now, though.
20 June — Sunday
An odd weekend.
Odd for now, typical of what once was. A weekend of doing puzzles in the Times, of sitting around reading, of having no human contact whatsoever. Not long ago all my weekends are like this, and now it almost seems as though I have come full circle. Earlier today I wondered if this would be a new pattern, or more accurately the resumption of an old pattern; if once again all my weekends would be spent alone.
I want it to be tomorrow and am unwilling to speculate precisely why this is so.
21 June — Monday
Arnold, I should have had less to drink tonight. I think I stayed sober enough at dinner, or at least sober enough in outward appearance. You must have known I was high. I wonder, though, if you know just how high I was.
I felt at times as though we were carrying on two conversations at once, an audible one and a private one of mind-talk. I want you, your eyes kept saying.
How did my eyes answer, Arnold? I honestly do not know. Because they spoke to you and not to me.
You are not a handsome man but I like the way you look to me. You are not a well-schooled man, you are not well- spoken, but I love your voice in my ears. I have known men who are younger and slimmer and better-dressed and glibber, and I have had their cocks in my hands and mouth and cunt, and their eyes have never talked to me as yours do.
Oh, Arnold, I don’t know what I...
This is silly and I am drunk, extra drinks since I came home and did not need those drinks. Drank with you and failed to show up for a date with a man in Greenwich Village telling myself it was because I was drunk and did not want to meet him drunk but actually it was because I did not want to go, did not want to go at all, wanted only to come home here and have a couple more drinks and go to bed, but instead I am not going to bed, I am sitting here at S C E 110, I am sitting here typing and hitting mostly the wrong keys and God only knows if what I am typing would be readable, not that it matters because it is not for reading, and here I am running on and on like this for no earthly purpose at all and what I really want to do is turn out the fucking lights and go to bed, but if I lie down I will probably vomit and if there’s one thing I hate it’s to vomit, which is probably not that unusual come to think of it because I suspect it’s rather a standard thing for people not to like to vomit because what’s there to like, after all, and I think I will stop writing this right now because I can’t stand it and what I really want is not to be writing this but to turn out the lights and go to bed with Arnold.
I didn’t mean that the fucking typewriter it wrote that all by itself and I did not mean it not a bit.
Or did I?
22 June — Tuesday
How could anyone bear to be an alcoholic? How could anyone have a morning like this every day? Even my hair hurts.
24 June — Thursday
Last night I...
Last night Arnold and I...
Oh, dear.
I got up from this chair just now and walked over to the radiator. And looked under the cover and saw nothing but the rusted tray in which one may, if so inclined, place water which evaporating will humidify a dcsiccated winter day. There Is no water in that tray.
Neither is there a pile of paper, paper which reposed there for a matter of months, pure innocent virgin white paper which some fool had ruined by typing drivel upon. Drivel on every sheet, sheet upon sheet of paper, week after week of paper-ruining, and all of that paper gone as the fool persists in her folly.
Gone.While the fool sits here, ruining more paper. Her diary is gone and she continues to diarize.
I am so afraid.
Dinner and a play.
I had mentioned the play. I don’t know what I mentioned about it, but Monday night when we had dinner I said something about having read a review of the play and it sounded interesting, and this afternoon he took me aside and said he’d gotten tickets.
And so we went. The play was...
Oh who cares how the play was?
I hardly paid attention to it myself. Two acts, and during the second act we held hands. My hand found his, and we held hands.
I guess I made up my mind then. Insofar as I made up my mind at all. I don’t think there was ever a point where my mind was literally made up. More that by then everything was set in motion, and I followed the script without ever looking at my lines in advance.
Well, / know what I mean.
Left the theater, talked about the play. Stood on West 47th Street sharing a cigarette. I had run out and we passed one of his back and forth, kissing each other through the cigarette as Paul and Gregory fucked each other through me. Did I write about Paul and Gregory? Two faggots who wanted to...
Oh, it doesn’t matter about Paul and Gregory. “Where would you like to go for dinner, Arlene?”
“Anywhere.”
“Steak? Chinese? Italian? Name it.”
“Actually I’m not very hungry.”
“Want something light?”
“Could we just have drinks somewhere?”
“Sure, if that’s all you want. Come to think of it, I’m not that hungry myself. This place okay?”
We went to the Spindletop two doors down from the theater. Tall long-stemmed waitresses with leotards and mesh stockings and plastic hair. I drank stingers and he drank Scotch on the rocks.
Two drinks each, and I said, “Would you like to go some place with me?”
“Wherever you say.”
“There’s an apartment.”
“An apartment?”
“In Chelsea.”
“Sure. Who lives there, friends of yours?”
“Nobody lives there.”
What did he think? I’ll always wonder. Whatever he thought, he kept it to himself. Pushed back his chair, put money on the table, took my arm. Out of the Spindletop and into a cab. His car was in a lot down the block but he knew not to bother with the car, knew the car would be there to be picked up later, knew I ought to be taken to the apartment directly.
I gave the driver my address.
Holding hands in the cab. Thought he might kiss me then and it would have been all right but hoped he wouldn’t and God bless him he didn’t, just held my hand and squeezed it now and then and I squeezed back.
Oh Jesus Jesus.
Cab pulled up in front of my door. “Right around the corner from your friends.” he said. “The friends you stay with when you don’t go back to Brooklyn.”
No answer from me. Into my building and up to my apartment and he waiting for me to ring the bell, but no ringing of the bell because I of course have my key. Trouble fitting it into the lock, fingers so nervous and shaky, and he takes the key from me and unlocks the door.
“This is a beautiful place.”
“I like it.”
“Whose is it?”
“A typewriter lives here. And a philodendron.”
We kissed. For a moment we each held something back, and then the moment passed and we didn’t. His arms around me, his tongue in my mouth, his hand dropping to cup my bottom and press me close.