1986

“Jan. 2nd. 1986 9 p.m.: I just came back from my odyssey in Mexico, late last night. We partied with Jim, his girlfriend, Larry (Joel’s brother) at Louie’s’ till 3 a.m. drinking vodkas, laughing, and talking excitedly about our whirlwind paced adventure that went surprisingly well. It was the best vacation I’d had so far. The next morning Dale came by for fifteen minutes to return the keys. She was back in S.F. and only had sad news of her own life and nothing done about it, as usual. I gave her a few of the jewelry trinkets I had left from Taxco. I promised to call her in a few days, not excited about it, as I’ve decided to gently phase her out of this apartment and my support.

I spent the afternoon with Martin at his pad from 2 to 8, telling him of my trip, the stimuli, dreams, Sanita, all philosophically, with many digressions, eulogies of travel life, love and how invigorating it could be. At six I invited Bruno over to this talkfest and he came with Claire. I urged him to read certain famous books, (non-Marxist) to which he reluctantly agreed… Dale had given me a pretty, gift book as she left, leather clad. It was a collection of sentences, apothegms, extracts from mostly American authors about ‘friendship’. It was a turn of the century ‘Southern Belle’ gift book, which she bought in the South and “perfumed”. I was alone and home again, in a happy mood, and had a great deal to reflect upon. February was right around the corner.

January 1986 turned out to be a peaceful month. I spend days alone in my apartment reading and reflecting on my life. I visited ‘C’ to talk business. His trip North for two weeks, while I was away, was a fiasco. Right away he told me how Lindsey had offered her body to him the first night there as he unpacked in the trailer. He didn’t refuse. I thought she was a confirmed lesbian by then, sleeping with ‘K’.

He asked if I was upset at this news. I told him: ‘Nope, thanks for the honesty, that’s just her way’. He was relieved by my reaction and wanted to do some more business in the next few months. This was a glad tiding for me in several ways. I now had even more excuses not only to ditch her but drop her out of mind forever as a player in any future of mine. ‘C’ was, in my view, a decent partner but as a man attractive to a woman, he seemed like the lowest street addict in New York city.

He rarely bathed or shaved and was an obvious junkie. He was still healthy, dark-haired, mustached, and handsome I suppose, but the way he fast-talked on every minor matter (even when there was no point to it) painted him a scam artist. That Lindsey jumped into bed with him so readily just proved to me her blindness. The fact that he confessed it right away revealed his renewed dependence on me as a partner. His opioid addiction was getting ever more expensive, and he admitted that too. I promised to help but I was already, (secretly, through Louie) looking for a new partner.

“Sund. Jan. 5th, 10 a.m.: Yesterday I had a most enjoyable conversation with Bill and Martin at my house all afternoon then continued with B. at the Med till 10 p.m. The talk was a flowing stream, easy and deep and at times as sparkling as it’s ever been.

“I’d asked Bill over by telephone. I gave him a large volume of Goethe in German which I’d found in a bookstore. It was a gift to him. I couldn’t read it, but he instantly took it up and began translating lyrics from it, which got us on a discussion of poetry…With ‘M’. and ‘B’, we don’t even have to be discreet. We talk of all aspects of our lives openly, criticize one another freely, never doubting the kind and good intentions these suggestions come from, a rich mine of mutual understanding.

“Only poor understandings resent critical advice. They cling to their meagre rags desperately, suspect evil motives, alienate themselves from help and lead beggared, wretched lives”.

I was filling pages with thoughts for the next few weeks, home, mostly alone. My talks with close friends were so honest, I didn’t see that it might be different with others. I let them flow into pages and when Sanita came the notebooks were lying on the table. Here’s the one which I later realized upset her one night. She never dared ask if she could read my personal journals. She was too shy and modest for that. But one night, when I was gone for a few hours, curiosity got the better of her, like the cat, and she began turning pages.

“I notice in my life a seeming propensity towards women with certain child-like aspects. I wonder whether we just take what comes our way or obey such propensities and subtly choose accordingly. Dale was an exception. She appeared very mature to me. But I was likewise young and different then. Lindsey, a year later, fit the pattern and Sanita does even more, while I figure myself much advanced in maturity.

“I should carefully define these delicate terms. By ‘child-like’ I mean nothing offensive or demeaning. I think it's good. It implies a simplicity of mind which also suggests a weakness and need to be protected and helped, but only from a lack of education and experience, mostly the fault of circumstances and environment, rather than proper dullness.

“I imply high qualities in simple-minded and pure-hearted women, their honesty and uncomplicated emotions, trust, and general kindness. I love children so much for all these same qualities and I love them with the same pureness of heart, as if they touched off responding chords in my own happy childhood. I’m not a nursing type and not a domineering type that seeks weakling dependants to mask my own shaky insecurity. The proof is, I’ve always felt secure and happy alone, lived most of my life in that state and if I did want weakling dependants to lord it over, they’re a whistle away in every sad slum”.

Now you can see I’m about twenty feet deep in manure with any woman whom I might invite to live with me. I didn’t realize at the time how such an assessment would shock and anger Sanita. But I found out. To make matters worse I go on in this entry to describe what I call ‘tainted’ women, with “hatreds, self-conceits, vices, envies, jealousies” from bad upbringings, ‘mature’ but only in twisted ways.

“I avoid these women like the plague because ‘dis-education’ is far more difficult than ‘education’. And pupils this old are your size and desperate combatants against you, because you threaten to knock down the whole structure of their ego to eliminate the rotten parts. So they fight against it, a sad, painful education, equally so for the teacher. There is no profession I would shun more than Psychiatry”.

It’s hard to believe I wrote this out and had her sitting next to the notebook on the table, her elbow upon it, less than two weeks later. When she did read it, ten days later, she must have thought I was looking for a child in a girlfriend, an unspoiled one, whom I could educate, ‘Pygmalion-like’ to be my perfect mate, a scary thought, or at best troubling.

I’m still surprised to this day that on that night, around ten, p.m. when I arrived home and she demanded that I drive her to the airport right away, in a fury of rage, flinging the notebook at me, that I was able to calm her down in the car (as I was compliant and sadly honored her request, helping her pack and driving her, a week before the ticket date).

Somehow, I soothed and swayed her with honied words and changed her mind before we reached the Oakland bridge. What oratory I used, what pleas, what promises, I forget. But I’m sure my whole heart and racing mind were at their best because I wanted her so much to stay with me.

The same rhetorical nonsense (or verbal dexterity) that gets you into trouble gets you out of it. At her first, sullen, tearful nod of forgiveness I quietly turned the car around. We spent the night in equally wise silence in each other’s embrace. Few people like to be dissected by others, especially their lovers.

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