December 23rd, 1979
Last night I dreamed that three men from out of town were in my house— trying to kill me. Wendy became sexually involved with them and became part of the conspiracy to kill me. I stab the men repeatedly with a sword— I feel the sword piercing their flesh. I am horrified but know I must save myself. I stab them over and over again. There is no blood— they laugh at me. I know that I am powerless to save myself.
Last Tuesday night, still coasting on the intellectual bravery I had acquired from my visit to New York, I went out. I will no longer to submit to the misery of an unwed Donna Reed. I am a healthy happy rational homosexual— I have, after a year of anguish, come to grips with the fact that true love as we have imagined and longed for, does not exist. I can no longer suffer though these mid-fifties needs for contentment of a roaring fire and a lover smoking a pipe as I coo with happiness at his feet. I will not continue to shoulder this burden. I approach my sexual needs with the eager nonchalance of a New Yorker— blunt sexual excitement; disencumbered of the emotional trash of love.
Last Tuesday night I met Michael.
For the past week I have been dating a Greek Orthodox priest and struggling over a painful decision not to return to my mother for Christmas. Snake wrestling. Michael and I have three days of warm intimacy and good sex— and tonight I crawl to another man. Any other man. I will not submit any emotional nonsense about love.
Washington becomes silent and abandoned during holidays. The bureaucracy goes back to small town home life. Now Christmas closes in like soft white pain over the deserted city. Allan is in Cleveland, Wendy in South Carolina— I sit at the kitchen table staring out at our grey winter patio, trying not to be depressed, and not being quite sure what I should be depressed about anyway.