Sensuous

23 April — Friday

Called in sick today. Dear Mr. Karlman, please excuse my absence today on grounds of illness. I am sick, Mr. K. I am worldsick, dying of weltschmertz. I am a good listener, Mr. K., as long as I do not have to listen to the pounding of the surf within my own tired head.

Have to remember to get my paycheck on Monday. No problem, enough cash to last the weekend. Always enough cash when there’s no place to go, nothing to do, no way to spend the money. Stay inside your apartment all weekend and what do you need but fifty cents for the Sunday Times?

I have to stop this.

Have to see someone tonight. Who? Doesn’t matter. Bad phone conversation yesterday that started my bad mood, a letter answering my ad, and I called this man and he was nice enough, decent enough, but anxious to arrange everything in advance, to discuss carefully just who would do what and with which and to whom, and a feeling of — what?

I don’t know. I should know but I don’t.

Let us figure it out.

Of two sick and pitiable creatures mechanically arranging to lick each other’s wounds. Joyless and personless, the meeting of two people who do not themselves exist. Would I be willing to urinate on him? Not that he insists on it, I am to understand, but if I could find it in myself to do so his pleasure would be complete. As for his part of the game, he would be glad to show me anything I would care to examine, to perform whatever little playlets I might require, to contribute to my fantasies as I contribute to his. Quid pro quo, this for that, do that ye might be done to.

Plummeting me into depression. “I’ll call you back,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t. Piss on you, I thought, cradling the phone, and thought that the phrase should amuse me, and thought then that it did not, and that little if anything did in fact amuse me.

Made calls to two other correspondents and hung up before anyone could answer. Remembered sitting with my handful of fourteen letters dreaming dreams of fantasies now and forever fulfilled, and now those letters and the fantasies and dreams along with them turned to ashes in my hand, in my mind, in my heart. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, dreams to death and decay, for Jennifer, for Arlene, even as for every philodendron on God’s imperfect planet.

The mood still there this morning, reinforced by sufficient physical malaise to make the sick call legitimate enough. Stomach upset, head aching dully. Sick and slick with night sweats and feeling bad head to foot. Bad dreams all night. Tossing and turning all night long, sheet damp with sweat.

Hell.

Do things, push yourself, take it step by step by step, and then you find out you’re the same person stuck in the same hell. Orgasms with another person are nicer than orgasms all alone, and being able to bring a man or woman pleasure with hands or mouth or cunt is better than being terrified of so much as a hand on one’s arm.

But still incomplete, still utterly alone. Still Arlene in one’s heart however many beds Jennifer shares.

The hell of this is that I at once believe it and disbelieve it. Last night it meant enough to make me mostly wish for death, and this morning it was still strong enough to keep me away from the office, to keep me in bed with the covers over my head waiting for the day to go away. And now I still believe it but also disbelieve it, both at once, disbelieving strongly enough so that I do think it is important that the philodendron is adding leaves, do think it is important that I am growing in certain ways if not in others. And important to seek, and to grab at excitement and orgasms and snatches of pleasure.

Better to have the black moods, bad as they are, for the sake of having the good times when they come. Before, in Brooklyn, there were no good times and no bad times either. It was bad when I thought overly much about who I was, but these thoughts came less frequently and did not have so much impact when they did. The highs were lower, the lows higher, and life went on without anything happening, inside or outside of the prison of my self.

I am alive now in ways I never was. Better to be alive. Though it is this state of life that makes one think unhappily of dying.

The philodendron, eternal or not, does not know that it will one day wither. The Human Condition — knowing that one is born to die.

I am not good at philosophy. It is not my best subject, nor am I its best object.

I will call Paul and Gregory, my gay boys. I am not good at philosophy but I am strangely good at pleasure. Not so good at pleasure of my own but surprisingly good at achieving the pleasure of others.

Whores, I have read, are frigid, turned off, feel nothing. The better they are at satisfying men, the less the likelihood of their ever experiencing satisfaction themselves. They suck cocks magnificently while their heads buzz with thoughts of television programs and hair appointments.

Fantasy of some day picking a man up on the street and posing as a whore. Taking him to a hotel, bedding with him for money. Pretending to be a whore? If I did it, would it be pretense?

I’d never do that, though.

I could call someone new but not tonight. Paul and Gregory. Made a tentative date to call them tonight, though didn’t expect I would keep it.

Why not?