October 2nd, 1977

Quiet sunny day at home alone. It’s been a strange week for me. My huge romance for Michael, shall we say, fizzled nearly before it got started. He came on to me like a hurricane. A night of great romance. And of course my heart soared into space like a balloon. Maybe this time. Somehow this collapse was just a little too much. I’ve been sitting on top of my piano singing “Maybe This Time” for years now. I begin to get hard around the edges. I know now that whoring is not the simple search for love. It is a process unto itself. So I lose my illusions. I stop wandering through the bars with my heart on my wrist like a wrist corsage. Tuesday night Allen and I go to Mr. P.’s after work for dinner. Manage to spend the evening drinking. Across the street at the Fraternity House I pick up a trick. He lives nearby. Good sex. I keep my heart out of it. I try to love his body and not look into his eyes. I try not to see how pretty he is. I try not to want to get to know him. I leave without exchanging last names. I rush home. To get ready for work. Trying not to think.

Wednesday night Allan and I go out again. The original party boys. We bar hop. Bad night. We close the bars and end the evening being outrageous on the block.

Thursday night I stay home and get drunk and stagger around the apartment crying for my father. I go through my suitcase full of pictures and find all the phographs of him. 

Friday night– out again. This time I bring home a Puerto Rican from Brooklyn Heights. Again– good sex. Try not to feel. He’s in Washington often. We exchange phone numbers.

Saturday night– out again. Bad night. We hit all the bars. Wind up on the block again. Allan finally makes out. I am intimidated and in a bad mood. Coming home alone I get picked up on Wisconsin Avenue by an absolute WORM who I bring home and smoke dope with and play Shirley Bassey and lie to him and tell him I am married and straight but “fool around.” He repulses me and I cannot wait for him to leave the next morning.

Now I sit, exhausted, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon listening to Miss. Bassey sing of sad young me playing at making love.

I guess it’s all a process of somehow not being vulnerable.

Late Sunday night.

Again I want a body. Just to hold onto for a little while.

—-

Do I really have the energy tonight to go out?

YES.