The last of my Bohemian days.
Though we both had fun on this visit and Sanita was now looking forward to coming back at the end of March and moving in with me, I found this strange entry, the day I took her to the airport, still ambivalent about relationships. We’d been up together most of the night doing lines. The three days before we spent at home together resting and reading in the same room a few feet apart (after so much partying) with serious talk of our relationship and future. Marg, Mat, and Martin dropped in many times for trivial, pleasant conversations, all saying goodbye and hoping to see her again soon.
“Thursday Feb. 20th, 9 p.m. Sanita left this afternoon, back to Texas. Bruno and I drove her to the airport then visited a private bookseller in S.F. where I bought a ‘Lipsius’ and a ‘Politian’ (1528 oldest book I own). Now I’m home alone for the first time in a long time without any prospect of company for a month ahead, which is something I’ve not felt for a year and a half. But now, after indulging last night, with extreme fatigue, I’m sullen and sad. What a difference it made that someone was sleeping in the next room when I was up. How I despise the cheap chemical thrill I sought last night and today. But it’s myself I despise for this over-sentimental state.
“My new books don’t avail me. I grew sick of lit., as if surfeited. I couldn’t look or think of them and was bored. From my indulgence and not sleeping with S., I lay awake with her sleeping in my arms for several hours this morning. But my thoughts and feelings were aglow on different matters.
“All through this afternoon till parting I was warm and friendly but distant, smiling past her. Now I feel guilty at the neglect, for being distant in her presence. I didn’t act like her boyfriend, or even polite as I parted from her outside the airport, using convenience as an excuse for not going in.
“What a hard world this is where we all suffer from the huge differences in our beings. And the pain reflects on us, echoing, still hurting each other by our behavior, our desires and gratifications never alike. Cruel jester, nature, sowing in us such complexities”.
“Feb. 27th, I talked to ‘S’ on the phone Thursday eve. Everything as usual with her, no surprises, easy, friendly talk. I told her of a trip there with Jim (a driving trip) still just imaginary. I couldn’t get her honest opinion to the proposal, just a ‘yes’. There’s hardly ever enthusiasm or disdain in her tone, perhaps her head. I invited Bruno and Claire out to dinner Sat. night, Louie, and L.A. Brian too, cultivating new friends and avoiding old ones”.
I added the last line because it was a memorable night. It was the only time I played the host, inviting them to a fancy South American restaurant with the clear understanding that they could order whatever they wanted and that I’d pick up the full tab. Here it is:
“Worked Friday 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Sat. without feeling tired but indulged late Friday eve. in a little Mexican ‘h’. Slept 11 hours to 3 p.m. Yesterday, I went to visit Jim at the warehouse and proposed the driving trip to Texas. Then to Bruno and Claire’s and a couple of friends of theirs from L.A. and all of us off to the ritzy restaurant. Louis came too but left after a half hour, feeling uncomfortable. We stayed merry, through four bottles of wine then I to Jim’s, driving him home and doing two lines (like a maniac), then downstairs to Bruno’s for another line then to a sauna in S.F. with the three of them".
I’ll never forget this bathhouse, or rather, the aftereffects. I went into one of those Swedish saunas, a single person room, and turned up the heat for twenty minutes. After that I swam in the pool and stepping out into the fresh, night air I felt as if I had just experienced some miraculous purification, as if all the built-up toxins in my body were suddenly gone, completely evacuated, years of them. I felt fresh and restored to perfect health. I remember it so vividly because it only happened this once. I’d tried other saunas, before and after (like Harbin Springs with Lindsey) but never with such a pronounced effect.
“Then we went back to Bruno’s for another three lines. I’ll kill myself yet, (so much for no toxins in my system). At dinner Bruno and I and our guests enjoyed fine talk. I sat across from an intelligent, mature, pretty, dusky-haired woman in her mid-twenties also contributing knowledgeably. This conversation continued and improved with the evening. Louie had left because he felt uncomfortable around ‘high-brow’ talk. He excused himself saying he had another engagement. Bruno and I talked ‘life’ a lot, other’s dilemmas, the qualities of aristocrats and snobs, status marks today, money’s dehumanizing tendencies, power’s corrupting effects, good dictators, (I mentioned the example of Timoleon, then Napoleon with flaws and good qualities combined).
“I told her and the others listening some wild stories of my college days in an entertaining way. Her mature grasp of mind, her attractive Latin face, put me in mind of those I might meet (but haven’t yet), a whole different class of women.
“Later that night at Bruno’s my talk drifted to my not being able to find and attract an intelligent female and I proposed the odd notion that I would have to go to Europe to do so.
“…to Europe, to meet a different circle of acquaintance, more culturally rich, more intellectual, like myself. I vented this excitedly, probably not to the most appropriate ears”.
Claire was with us, but I considered her close to this intellectual woman and even remarked that night how well they both conversed. She became a doctor four years later.
